By looking at the average person today, you can notice that potential consumers are pretty much satiated by aggressive marketing strategies. No one really enjoys being spammed with dozens of messages or annoyingly interrupting commercials. Even worse, just a small fraction of relevant consumers are barely paying attention to them. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to traditional “pushing” marketing strategies out there. Instead, you can use inbound marketing to generate leads by capturing the customers’ attention when they want it. If you want your business to flourish, you have to align with customers’ needs and offer them the right solution at the right moment. And this is exactly why inbound marketing is a good tactic for a variety of businesses and websites today.
Which strategies to use in inbound marketing to generate leads?
You can use inbound marketing to increase lead generation from an engaged audience. However, this is not an easy and fast way of attracting potential customers. Bear in mind that you will have to produce quality content, and offers, that provide real value to potential customers. This often requires a lot of patience and determination but is an excellent way to remain competitive with established competitors. That’s why investing in inbound marketing can seriously be an efficient way to target the right audience and increase leads.
What is inbound marketing?
In a simple way, you can consider inbound marketing as a strategy that allows customers to find you. But, without having to chase them with offers, as some more aggressive strategies do. You do that by attracting them to come when they are ready, by offering valuable content. Basically, you are creating content for specific buyer personas, or targeted audiences. This way, by aiming at your ideal customers, you are significantly increasing conversion rates.
However, you don’t focus on conversion right away. First, you are trying to build a firm relationship by getting their trust. After that, you are starting to mix sales pitches through newsletters and other channels. The point is, you will be the first on their mind when they are ready to get the solution to their problems.
Inbound marketing strategy offers many benefits, among which are:
- Trust and relationship building
- Increases visibility
- Large engagement
- Constant leads generation
- Cost less than outbound marketing
- Easier to close leads
- and finally, high Return On Investment (ROI)
This strategy helps you to understand who, and when, is the average targeted persona willing to become a consumer. By the same token, inbound marketing will help you focus your business efforts in the right places.
Now, let’s consider some of the most efficient inbound marketing strategies you can use to build an engaged audience pool.
Content marketing
It’s widely known that creating quality content is a prerequisite for any successful marketing strategy. You can publish and distribute quality content on different media to increase your website traffic. However, the content marketing ecosystem is getting packed. Mostly because of the amount of quality content that shows up daily. And in the future, it might be hard to produce any satisfying results due to glut on the market. That’s why you have to be creative and use other ways to create and promote your content. Besides creating articles, blogs, and other similar content, you could implement online videos, podcasts, webinars, and other lately efficient strategies.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Needless to say, but SEO is and will remain one of the essential parts of every marketing campaign. Basically, most information today comes in digital form. And the number of people seeking different products and services online is constantly growing. That’s why it’s necessary to increase your online visibility as much as possible. This will help you drive organic traffic to your website, and filter out those who actually require your services. With a good SEO, you will be able to win a good position on search engine result pages. However, sometimes is necessary to get the help of professionals like the Link Department, to handle more complex parts of SEO, such as link-building. Which, by itself, ensures that your business or website will not remain unnoticed.
PPC or pay-per-click
Another efficient part of inbound marketing is a paid advertising. In essence, you pay for top positions in search results to attract more leads. By combining PPC with SEO, you target a specific audience and place your product in front of them. This combination is an excellent way to evaluate your ranking, increase your website traffic, and improve conversion potential.
Offering to test a product
Whether you are offering digital or physical goods, giving a version of your product for testing purposes can improve your leads. In numerous cases, people are not willing to complete the exchange because they didn’t have the opportunity to check how products behave in practice. Basically, they don’t know if that product will help them at all. Despite what advertisings claim. That’s why you can offer a demo or a trial version if you are selling a digital product. Or, a test sample if you are selling physical goods. That will give them a taste of your offer and eventually help them decide if your product suits them.
Utilize a clear call-to-action
Even though inbound marketing is not an aggressive approach, you can still utilize the “Call-To-Action“. However, you should be careful about how you use them to avoid being intrusive. Basically, you have a few viable options when it comes to CTA:
- Discrete position at the end of an article or post
- A helpful link at the end of your video material
- Complaisant offer on the side or at the bottom of some of your webpages
- Engaging button at your landing page
- Pop up CTA with perfect timing
Make sure your CTA is engaging by clearly stating the benefits and its purpose.
Social media marketing
Generally, you can use different social media channels to generate leads. They are an excellent way of promotion that can get you a wide audience. But, they are also a good resource to analyze your buying personas. However, it’s not always good to spread your attention on too many channels at once. Basically, you should look for those where the audience specific to your industry submits. That way, you can easily analyze and adjust your content, and other strategies as well.
Email listings
Email listings are still one of the most valuable assets for online marketing. Eventually, you will combine all the above methods to encourage people to subscribe. It’s a great form to serve your audience with offers. But, you should always pay attention to provide something valuable or it will be nothing but spam.
In the end, the idea of inbound marketing is to attract customers by offering them something valuable. Advertising the products and services is fine, but it has to go beyond that. Among other goals, you should focus on a long-lasting relationship with your potential consumers if you want your inbound marketing to generate leads.