Using inbound marketing to change the way you do marketing

By Kelyn Donough

The way consumers relate to brands in this digital age, is very different to a few years ago. Consumers now have more interaction with the brands they consume through the use of the internet and social media.
Previously, organisations would need to broadcast messages about their brands to their consumers in order to build brand awareness and thus result in them purchasing their brands.
Inbound marketing allows for effective leads in order to grow your business and can transform your marketing. There is basically a three- step process to inbound marketing that makes it successful; get found, convert visitors to leads and then analyse and improve.

1. Content: Content is a big deal these days and is the best way for you to generate leads. Content will also keep them engaged throughout their purchasing journey with your business.

Make sure your content is relevant by making it about your business’ products, how it works, and how it will benefit them. Statistics have shown that those companies that blog have 55% more visitors to their websites, purely because they provide content.

Content is great but it must not only be of great standard but rather the type of content that makes it easy for consumers to share and consume.

2. SEO: This is the easiest and most effective way for your consumers to find content that you have created. Make it easier for customers to find your page by using the correct inbound links and keywords to boost your ranking in search engines. This is very important as this is where a consumer’s purchasing journey begins. Make sure your business is on top of the search engine’s first page results, or even positioned as the first website on the search engine.

3. Social Media: Social media will play a big role in how your content impacts your consumers. Social media makes it much easier for consumers to share content which is then shared on networks of personal relationships, making it more trustworthy and in so doing drawing more customers to your site.

Inbound marketing is the most effective marketing method for doing business online. It stays away from the old (outbound marketing) buying ads, hoping for leads and buying email lists, and instead provides consumers with quality content that will lure them into buying your product. Content that is specific to your target audience will increase inbound traffic.