The whats, whys and hows of building a good inbound marketing site

Amplifying your impact through targeted content is the cornerstone of a successful inbound marketing website. With consumers actively conducting extensive online research, the modern marketer’s task has shifted from finding leads to helping leads find you. While inbound is a powerful marketing tactic, it needs to be combined with the overall marketing mix to achieve increased revenue, shorter sales cycles and an improved marketing ROI.

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is the process of helping potential customers find your company before the purchasing decision, and then turning that early awareness into brand preference and ideally into revenue. Relevant and interesting content is the driver that propels the inbound marketing strategy. Powerful content has the ability to be optimised for different channels so that it can be easily found, therefore ensuring that your website is filled to the brim with great content, is an obvious starting point.

Further content should be disseminated across additional social platforms and news sites to engage with potential customers wandering around the web and point them towards your website, ultimately carrying your reader through their journey of interest from initial thought leader articles and delivering them directly to your full offering. The likelihood is that if there is an interest in your content and if your content is centred around your offering then there will be interest in your offering.

How to do it

Optimization is key so that potential customers can find your content. Effective Search Engine Optimization will ensure that your website ranks organically in the relevant online searches, Paid Advertising such as PPC will increase your visibility further and Conversion Rate Optimization will incorporate good UX design to create an experience for your website visitors that encourages quicker conversions.

Social Media Marketing will give you exposure through your social platforms and content generation in varying formats such as white papers, articles, press releases, case studies and blog posts will target viewers at different stages of the sales cycle.

Incorporating inbound into a larger group of marketing tactics creates a holistic approach. Using events and webinars as well as print, television and radio will provide additional streams of interest to run concurrently and strengthen your brand awareness.

Tips for your website:

• Optimise, optimize, optimize with SEO, SEM and CRO.
• Be mobile friendly otherwise mobile searchers will see you ranked lower than those competitors who are optimised for mobile
• Create clear website navigation and CTA’s to guide your viewer to the information they require
• Commit to lead nurturing for those that sign up to your newsletter or follow your blog

Tips for your content:

• Create relevant content that inspires, educates or answers customer questions and needs
• For ideas on what your viewers might be interested in, look to the analytics behind the search bar on your website and talk to your staff about what kinds of information clients are asking them for
• Create plenty of varying content and share across all relevant platforms

Why to do it
There are tangible benefits for employing Inbound Marketing tactics including:

Increased brand awareness when 93% of buying cycles start with an online search and the quicker your brand comes up the more credibility you receive in the eyes of the consumer. And in this age of digital sharing, your content can quickly spread to a wider pool of more relevant people.

Building stronger relationships is a by-product of frequent, high quality content creation as people engaging regularly with your content begin to grow a certain loyalty and respect.

Cost effective tools such as free blogs and Twitter feeds can offer enormous exposure. The time and knowledge you give is an investment in your thought leadership status and ultimately your credibility?

More targeted as people self-qualify their interest by signing up for a newsletter, following a blog or engaging in any way. They essentially take themselves a fair way through the journey of education if you provide them with enough of the right content. And then you have them exactly where you want them – at the point of sale.

Image: baldiri via Flickr.