5 Inbound Marketing Tips to Grow Your Business

Inbound marketing refers to the strategy of using content (such as blog posts, videos, eBooks and other valuable reference materials) and search engine optimization (SEO) to draw customers to your business, as opposed to outbound methods like cold calling and email marketing.

While outbound marketing is an effective way to find new customers and maintain relationships with existing ones, inbound marketing is quickly becoming the best way to reach people you do not know and who do not know you, but who are looking for the products and services you are offering.

The following five inbound marketing tips will help you grow your business using the power of the Internet.

Employ A Strong Website Design

One of the basics of inbound marketing is having a helpful, useful Web site that makes it easy for customers to find the information they are looking for. A site that is easy to use will bring customers back, and a good design is critical for this. You can use Web-based tools like WordPress to help build your site and manage the content.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Once your Web site is live, you need to make sure customers can find it. SEO will help with that. When you "optimize" your site for search engines, you are trying to control how well your site ranks when a potential customer searches for a product or service you sell, or asks a question related to your business or expertise.

There are many ways to optimize your Web site, including cross-linking and using keywords, but there are no shortcuts; never trust anyone who claims to be able to improve your site's ranking considerably without adding high-quality, relevant content to the site.

Start by maintaining a blog and posting to it often. If you don't know what to write about, look for other businesses that are creating content and see what they are doing. For instance, if you are a contractor, you can write about what customers should look for in high quality homes. Ask your vendors and suppliers to link to your site in exchange for you writing about their products and linking back to them. This combination of content and linking should improve your SEO quickly.

Promote Your Site and Content

You can create the nicest Web site and write the best blog post, but unless you promote them, they will stay hidden. Include a link to your Web site in the default signature field of your email and your social media profiles.

When you have created a new blog post, share it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social sites you use, not to mention in your email marketing messages. Connect with others in your industry, and see if any of your peers will share your blog post with their networks.

Remember More Content Is King

Just as you want to expand your business, you want to expand your content offerings. Start looking through your blog for common themes you have written about. Can you put together a short eBook about what consumers need to know about home inspections using content you have already written? This has real value, and since you are using existing content, it will not take a lot of time. Better yet, it will give prospective customers more assurance that you are an expert in your field.

You can also create tools for customers, such as a mortgage calculator or a design template that they can use when decorating their home. Providing these items on a regular basis will give you a steady flow of Web site traffic.

Monitor and Measure

Do you know where your inbound traffic is coming from? Use a tool like Google Analytics to keep tabs on which sources are driving people to your Web site, and take advantage of that information.

With Google Analytics, you will get an in depth peek into just who is visiting your Web site, what kind of content they are looking for, how long they are staying on your site before going elsewhere, what they are clicking and, most important, whether they are converting into customers. This will help you refine your strategy, and will also help you experiment along the way.

For example, if you see that Facebook or Twitter are driving most of your traffic, you can devote more attention to engaging there. If Web searches are accounting for a good percentage, you can discover the specific words that people are using to find you, and then incorporate them into your content moving forward. You cannot act if you do not know, so take the steps necessary to learn more.

The End Results

Building your Web site and drawing traffic is the core of these inbound marketing tips. By creating interest in your Web content, you can bring in customers motivated to spend money on your product or service and then hook them with your expertise. Using these inbound marketing tips is a fantastic method to grow your business.

Ida Mae Boyd
Contributor

David O