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How Inbound Marketing Can Revolutionize Your Web Strategy

Katelyn Ahern Digital Project Manager
#Digital Marketing, #Inbound Marketing
Published on May 6, 2014
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Learn about how you can use inbound marketing to drive traffic to your website, engage your audience, and build relationships with them.

Inbound marketing may just be a term you have seen lately, or it may be the foundation of your marketing efforts. Either way, there are several benefits to following the inbound marketing methodology. Let’s dive into the specific ways that implementing this strategy can not only help your marketing success but also assist in your company’s website success.

Increasing Website Traffic

Inbound marketing has several components that work to increase your website traffic. The powerful aspect of inbound marketing is that these strategies don't just aim to increase random traffic, but rather to increase traffic from visitors who are interested in what you have to offer them. In order to achieve this goal, there has to be a well thought out strategy behind your traffic generating efforts. One of the areas of inbound marketing that cater to this goal is Search Engine Optimization. This helps your content rank competitively for search queries that match your company’s expertise and services. In order to make sure you are consistently staying relevant, it is also important under the inbound marketing methodology to be continuously publishing new content.

How often do you revisit a website that hasn't changed anything in years? I would predict almost never, unless you're looking for contact info for your favorite take-out restaurant down the street. For those of us who don't work in the restaurant industry and need to find other ways to leverage our website as a business tool, this is where inbound comes in. Keeping your content updated and relevant gives your audience a reason to come back for more information. They may not be ready to buy your products today (like with that lucky restaurant) but in six months or a year, after they have visited your website several times and continued to receive great information from you, I bet that they will think to come to your company for a service over some other company that they just saw for the first time.

Creating a Two Way Street

Using inbound marketing tactics can not only helps to create more traffic to your website, but also to create more opportunities for your visitors to connect with you. I have spoken before about how unlikely it is to connect with your visitors if the only place for them to get in touch with you is on your "Contact us" page. Creating follow-up content on your website to further educate your visitors on topics in which you have expertise is a great way to engage with them further. They get an extra piece of content, and you get to know what they are looking for more information about. This can also help you to understand how close they might be to making a purchase with you. By seeing all of the content they are interested in, you can further understand how qualified this lead is in wanting your services. Creating landing pages with offers for your website visitors is a best practice in the inbound marketing methodology; this is a great way to further connect with your visitors from your website and continue to provide them with the information they are looking for.

Building on That Relationship

Another important factor of inbound marketing is to make sure that you are creating content specific to different segments of your audience. Instead of trying to appeal to everyone for everything, creating the niche content for your target personas is important in order to build on your relationship with your audience and provide even greater value for your leads and clients. By segmenting your lists and creating specific content for your leads and clients you can further build on your established relationship and create a more valuable one going forward. This can be applied even further when you create content based on the buyer’s journey. The main thing to keep in mind when you segment your lists in these ways is to meet your leads where they are and deliver them what they need at that time.

Tracking Your Success

Tracking your metrics along the way can, at times, be forgotten. I truly believe this is the secret ingredient. With inbound marketing, there are best practices to follow, but without catering these to your goals and audience they won’t be effective. By tracking your metrics along the way, you can see what is and is not working. Even more importantly, this information can help guide your adjustments along the way to find what really resonates with your audience. We can follow our gut and search blindly for the answers, but I think this way is a much more solid strategy.

There are many advantages to following the inbound marketing methodology; these are just some of them. Have you found another benefit to inbound marketing? Are you still unsure if inbound marketing is right for you? Let us know in the comments, or get in touch; we would be happy to chat with you about it.