Are you tired of marketing? Aren’t we all. It doesn’t matter what type of business you have. Marketing can be stressful. Think about this. According to Survey Monkey, 1 in 3 marketers (36%) say getting the attention of their target market is the top challenge they face. Can you imagine how many people without a background in marketing find marketing difficult?
For a long time, to reach their target audience, businesses would surprise a person with their presence, like waitstaff singing happy birthday to you at a restaurant out of the blue despite telling your family you despise the gesture. You can think of this scenario as outbound marketing — when you reach out to people to find out if they are interested in what you have to offer.
Inbound Marketing Engages Rather Than Disrupts
Now, there are more ways to use inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a strategy focused on spreading brand awareness by creating content that people can find value in when looking for information relevant to your business.
You are essentially helping your audience find you using forms of pull marketing. Pull marketing includes the use of blogs, events, social media, search engine optimization (SEO), eBooks, tip sheets, whitepapers, how-to guides, emails, and videos, to name a few.
Resources such as blogs, eBooks, tip sheets, whitepapers, and how-to guides, if they speak to your target audience’s pain points, can help to attract consumers and increase your website traffic. However, you must be patient with the results of blogging and creating freebies. It can take 1-2 years or more to see more traffic to your website from creating free content for your target audience.
Blogging
Your goal should be to create a minimum of 60 blog posts to see growth if you consistently publish with internal links to your freebies. The free, value-based content will help your audience to learn more about you and become invested in the idea of working with you, with a new piece of this type of content created monthly.
Videos
Videos are another fantastic way to help people discover you through their quest for information related to what you do. Videos provide a great opportunity for people to learn about your services, consumer experiences through testimonials, capabilities from case studies, and about your industry, specialty, or discipline.
Emails
As for email marketing, emails can help build brand awareness as you can ask those who have trusted you with their contact information to share your emails with others. Emails will also always keep your brand top of mind for those on your list for the day they need your help as long as you continually convey what you do, the value of your work, and why they should care. You can do this by sharing new articles, freebies, videos, and more with your email subscribers.
Social Media
Social media, on the other hand, is a very direct brand awareness marketing tactic. Through hashtags and keyword phrases, you can help your audience find your business on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, to name a few, which will give your audience the instant gratification of knowing that you are there for them with the information they are looking to receive.
Search Engine Optimization and Growth-Driven Website Design
Keyword phrases are also helpful in driving traffic to your website, using a mix of search engine optimization (SEO) with growth-driven website design and development. SEO begins with keyword research and a keyword strategy that focuses on words and phrases that your target audience would likely use during their search for information relevant to your service business.
With your keywords, you can then create targeted content that provides your audience with value. Then, to improve your website conversion rate, you should continually assess your website and its content to enhance content and areas of your website where there could be a better user experience based on website analytics.
Benefits of Inbound Marketing
These marketing tactics lessen your audience's chances of feeling like you are selling to them. Consumers have been known not to like feeling pushed or manipulated to take action, such as investing in a service. Instead, inbound marketing educates, entertains, and is welcomed more openly by consumers, as it gives consumers more autonomy to engage you when they are ready.
You want to empower consumers with all the information they need to make a buying decision, with the most impactful information deriving from messaging strategy development. Giving the consumer what they need to make an educated decision builds likability, trust, authority, and reputation.
