Don’t Push Messages Out, Pull Customers In With Inbound Marketing
As small business owners, we should all focus each day on how we can make our marketing strategy better. The Internet has entirely repositioned traditional marketing, making print advertising essentially obsolete. We’re constantly faced with bettering our online presence and, to be frank, there exists no better way to do so than to optimize business through the return that can come from inbound marketing.
In recent years it has become more and more apparent that consumers are fed up with traditional marketing efforts that seek to find customers by inundating them with junk mail, spam, cold calls and other unsolicited communications. The objective of this traditional “push” method is to place your company’s message in front of as many people as possible. Yet, this method has become so exhausted that it is no longer effective and the people that it seeks to reach have become immune to such marketing tactics. Inbound marketing is a great alternative and the most effective way to weave your business into the fabric of the Internet.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing seeks to pull customers in by creating opportunities to engage with visitors through the use of meaningful content (information your customers want to know), search engine optimization (aka SEO: to insure customers find your content) and through the use of social media to amplify and personalize your presence among your target audience.
Create Content: Creating content that is meaningful to your potential client or customer pool is the most important thing you can provide. The logical assumption is that if they want it, and you have it, they will come to you. The converse is also true, if they seek you out, and you have nothing meaningful to offer, they will look elsewhere. Content is king.
Search Engine Optimization: SEO is the art of creating meaningful content using keywords and phrases that your target audience is looking for in order to increase your company’s search engine ranking. If your site does not appear on the first page of a search result, the further back you are, the chances of a potential client finding your website decreases exponentially. SEO, done well, maximizes your ranking.
Social Media: The beauty of social media is that your company’s meaningful content is passed from person to person, generating discussion, buzz and excitement by those people that are specifically interested in what your company has to offer. The holy grail of in bound marketing is to have a video, or article “go viral” meaning the number of people viewing it increases exponentially. It is like that old shampoo commercial, “I told two friends. They told two friends and so on and so on” but repeated at the fiber optic speed of the Internet.
The Benefits of Inbound Marketing:
Understanding what is inbound marketing is as easy as understanding its benefits. Simply put, inbound marketing doesn’t irritate viewers (because customers seek you out), is less expensive than push marketing (it is targeted to those consumers interested in you rather than inundating a “target audience”) and most importantly, inbound marketing generates sales and consumer loyalty (if consumers go to you first for information they will continue to do so in the future).
The end result of an inbound marketing campaign is that it is the most effective way for customers who want to engage with you to be pulled into your business giving you the best opportunity to make a sale or engage a client. As the old saying goes, knowledge is power. In today’s digital market place, however, it is shared knowledge that is the real power.
Let’s Start Sharing:
A good conversation is a great start to sharing. Give Hero a call to start a conversation about how your inbound marketing strategy could be even better. Already have an inbound strategy but it’s not working to the extent that you had hoped? Contact us so that we can discuss ways to beef it up and make it better.
