Inbound Marketing Cornerstones
Key examples of inbound activities your company should be implementing include:
Lead Generation - building quality email lists for continual, long-term marketing by providing:
- Downloadable offers like gift or buying guides, or eBooks
- Interactive content like quizzes and calculators
- Access to helpful online content behind a subscribe button
- Discounts and special offers delivered on a frequent basis to email list members
- Newsletters full of informative content and tips sent monthly or bi-monthly
Live Chat - starting a real-time conversation can help your website visitors overcome any objections early on. Plus, you can ask for their email address in case you need to get back to them later!
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - maintaining and continually adding to a website that is:
- Textually tailored for key phrases that consumers search for using the pillar content approach
- Fast to load and easy to navigate both on desktop and mobile devices
- Intuitive and informative, providing consumers with easy to absorb information
- Properly configured in regard to purchasing safety, consumer data privacy and security
Social Media Marketing (SMM) - using social media platforms for:
- Organic outreach
- Community building
- Sharing third-party and user generated content to establish trust
- Targeted advertising based on segmented demographics
- Referrals with value comparable to traditional word of mouth
Blogging - short and long form article marketing based from an owned domain which:
- Educates consumers
- Shares helpful tips
- Answers questions
- Showcases how customers are using products
- Provides solutions
Video Content - videos with a clear message and branding designed to:
- Appeal to target demographics
- Be widely shared on social and messaging platforms
- Increase brand visibility and recognition
Contests - using a landing page, Facebook Lead Ad, or contest tool like Shortstack, capture email addresses in exchange for a giveaway of your products or services
Webinars - long-form content presented in slide format with the goal of:
- Delivering information about a consumer pain point
- Presenting a solution (your product or service)
- Motivating the webinar participant to take action
Paid Ads - on Google or social media. Paid ads help you reach people already looking for your product, and expedite the buying cycle.
All of the above actions are driven by the ideology that consumers who are educated about their purchasing choices are better leads than those who are simply presented with a sales pitch. Inbound marketing activities are less costly over the long term than traditional advertising, and should be embraced by consumer goods producers to better manage marketing costs and build a solid base of consumers with a high Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
In Part 2, we’ll explore the benefits of inbound, showcase some brands which are successfully leveraging inbound to grow their business, and lay out four ways you can begin using inbound to develop high quality leads and increase sales for your business.
