It’s 2017 and embracing the inbound way is more important now than ever before in digital marketing.
Search is still the #1 traffic source for websites. Consumers desire to connect and stay engaged with their favorite brands through social media, with a third of millenials stating that social is their preferred channel for communicating with businesses. And, people are spending 3 times longer watching live videos than those that have been prerecorded.
These compelling numbers, among others, prove that a working inbound marketing plan is crucial to your success if you want to attract today’s market. The good news is that it’s not too late to create a blueprint that aligns with your business goals and appeals to your audience.
If you haven’t fully mapped out your inbound marketing strategy for the year or seem to be struggling putting a winning formula together for your company, the proceeding steps will give you the clarity needed to develop your plan for 2017.
Step #1 Be Crystal Clear on Your Audience
The first practice to any marketing plan is having a clear idea on the people you’re promoting to and how your brand helps solve their problems. Especially vital during your content creation process, visualizing who your target audience is and knowing their pains, challenges, and interests ensures that what you publish will capture their attention and resonate.
With so much noise on the Internet, it’s easy for consumers to get distracted. How do you separate your brand from the masses? It starts with having a strong knowledge on the people you serve so your content hits home…every time.
Once you’ve established your audience, stay in-tuned with their needs by requesting feedback and monitoring comments and reviews. Tools like IntouchInsight give you customer insight tools that positions you to be proactive with your market, ensuring that you’re offering amazing experiences with your brand that keeps them coming back to you.
Step #2 Hone Your Email Marketing
According to EmailMonday, 74% of companies still see email marketing as one of the channels with the highest ROI even five years from now. Since growing your leads list is the lifeline to your business, focusing on growing and perfecting your email marketing is key to yielding favorable outcomes like increased revenue.
Your list is also your biggest fans and can be leveraged to progress your business goals. Here are a few tactics to consider in amplifying your email marketing:
Growing Your Subscriber List
- Present a pop-up towards the end of your content when your visitor has finished reading that page
- Use “inline” downloads or opt-in boxes that appear within your blog post. The content offer specifically relates to the blog post the visitor is reading, dramatically improving lead conversions
- Host quality-rich webinars regularly; participants must register with their contact info to attend your broadcast, generating fresh leads every time
Cultivating Your List
- Use proper nurturing techniques to move your leads closer to the buying decision
- Be consistent in your email marketing. If you plan to email your list once a week or 3 times a month, stick to that schedule to set the expectation
- Your blog is an amazing source to share value with your audience. Promote your articles to your list and encourage them to pass it along for increased exposure
Step #3 Enrich Your Blog Content
Did you know that 2.7 million blog posts are being published daily (Source: HostingFacts)? With such a huge emphasis on content marketing, being creative and engaging with your blog content will give your posts the slight edge with your market.
Also, these additions help to improve SEO ranking as you keep readers on your page and better user-engagement.
Check out the following tips to craft amazing blog posts:
- Incorporate interactive content like polls, surveys, infographics, calculators, videos and podcasts
- Add lots of visual content. Articles that include an image once every 75-100 words receive more social shares than content with less visuals.
- Optimize your blog for mobile reading. With more website visits taking place on mobile devices, you want to ensure your audience can read yours legibly
- Long-form content performs extremely well on search engines. Create a content strategy that supports 1500+ words blog articles
- Consider hiring a content creator on WorkMarket who excels in this space and can help you publish winning articles to accelerate your blogging strategy
Step #4 Focus on Increased Social Media Engagement
Building and growing your brand on social media positions you to better connect and building relationships with your followers while increasing awareness of what you do.
Because social media is playing almost as big a role in purchasing decisions as television, furthering your social media presence will prove to be a profitable goal for your brand…one that is certainly attainable.
- Have an agenda for each post that you publish; do you want to generate likes? Shares? Or leads? With a well-defined goal, you can convey this purpose in your CTA
- Offer a variety of remarkable content that speaks to your audience. Share social videos (more on this next), high-quality images, GIFs, curated content, and your blog articles to keep your posts interesting
- Share landing page links that relates to followers on that specific platform. For example, if you’re sharing a landing page on Facebook, be sure that it connects to those followers. This personalized technique significantly improves conversions
- Be social. Engage in your followers’ content by liking, sharing and commenting on their posts. Use tools like Nuvi that allow you to monitor engagement and help you maintain a consistent presence on your social networks
Step #5 Up Your Video Game
Videos have an incredible effect on capturing attention, showcasing your brand, and bringing authenticity to your content. You see, people crave transparency and it makes you more relatable. Upping your video will further humanize your brand while quickly attracting your audience.
There are a plethora of ways to increase videos into your inbound strategy. Take a look at the following ideas to using this platform in your marketing:
- Use live-streaming videos like Facebook Live and Periscope to connect with your social media followers. These videos automatically play into their newsfeed
- Create product videos that offer the benefits, features, how it works, and where people can purchase
- Share your brands story
- Expand on popular blog posts
- Answer FAQs in short, mini-videos
Conclusion
Implementing this inbound marketing will create a solid foundation for your online goals. Plan to develop each piece, keeping your business objectives and target audience in mind. With consistent execution, you’ll experience a nice growth in your company this year.