Successful full-funnel marketing strategies drive awareness, educate your audience and convert them to leads simultaneously using a variety of channels. Mobile devices (yes, your smartphone) make it easier for marketers to connect instantly with their audience.
How you decide to send the message to them that your startup or business solves the need they’re looking for makes the difference.
Read more below to discover top full-funnel marketing strategies.
Have you ever been researching a product and can’t find the information you are looking for to make a purchase confidently?
This is probably because the company lacks a mid-funnel marketing strategy. Each stage of the buyer’s journey needs customized content that easily guides buyers along their way to make a purchase.
Read more about creating a successful mid-funnel marketing strategy below.
Picture this, you’re scrolling on social media and see a random post on your feed about a new product. One catches your attention. You click through to get to the main post, read the caption, and inspect the picture. Feeling compelled to learn more, you navigate to the company’s website. From there, you hop on a landing page to read about this insanely attractive product you didn’t know you needed. You’re hooked.
Welcome to the first two stages of the inbound marketing funnel – you’re not alone in this journey. Marketing gurus in this digital era use various strategies to capture their target audience’s attention. They want their audience to act and then somehow develop a long-term relationship with each of their customers.
That’s the goal – not just to get sales and increase profits, but to build a meaningful relationship. In short, inbound marketing is a non-invasive approach to marketing for the right people at the right time in the right place.
Discover more about the inbound marketing and the funnel experience below.
Do you have a great company with superb services, yet you’re struggling to attract new customers? It’s probably not your product – it’s more likely an issue with your marketing strategy. This is where using an inbound marketing methodology can help. This strategy focuses on turning strangers into customers and building your brand presence.
Learn more about this strategy, and more importantly – why it works.
What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing focuses on four key stages to better promote your business: Attract, Convert, Close and Delight. Each stage has specific methods to convert casual observers of your company into customers, and ultimately, brand promoters.
Attract: This first stage attracts strangers through blogs, social media posts, keywords, and web pages.
Convert: The next stage turns visitors into leads through calls-to-action, landing pages, lead forms, and contacts.
Close: The third stage focuses on converting leads into customers. This can be done by sending email campaigns, creating workflows, conducting lead scoring, and integrating with a CRM.
Delight: The final stage is to turn your customers into promoters of your brand. You can do this through social media posts, smart calls-to-action, emails, and workflows.
Why Inbound Marketing Methodology Works
Now that you know what inbound marketing is, it’s time to talk about the part you really care about – why this method works.
It increases your website traffic
Inbound marketing focuses on increasing your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and your content marketing efforts with robust pages. Doing this can drive more targeted traffic — and qualified leads — to your website. Creating more content (like blogs, articles, and pages) tied to the specific keywords that are relevant to your customers can help increase your ranking on search engines, like Google.
It enhances your qualified leads
With inbound marketing methodology, you are not just creating content for the sake of producing content. Under this strategy, you are creating content to attract your targeted audience. To do this, you want to think about what your potential customers are interested in and what they might be searching for. This can include blogs on industry trends and how-to articles that can drive them to your site. Your audience now has a much better understanding of who you are and what products and services you provide, so they become a more qualified lead than someone who just clicked on an ad.
There is also another perk to creating good content – it can get picked up by other websites and publications. This puts your content in front of their audience as well, to attract more leads.
Image Source: HubSpot
It allows you to show them what you do
When you publish engaging, quality content on your site, your leads will associate that same level of quality with your company. Your content also demonstrates your business’ expertise, and how your products and services can help your customers. This allows leads to have a clear understanding of what you do, why you do it, and how you do it.
It lets you control the content and the costs
Inbound marketing can be a cost-effective way to promote your brand. When you run an ad, you need to pay for the ad spot and the creative. With content, you can likely create it in-house. It will only cost time. Plus, you own the content, so you can keep it on your site and reuse it as you need it. You can use one blog on your website, in social posts, emails, and more. This makes inbound marketing campaigns more effective than outbound campaigns – getting as much as three times the ROI on inbound campaigns, according to HubSpot.
It helps you build relationships with your customers
Inbound marketing methodology involves creating quality, relevant and useful content that will help your customers – and potential customers – do their jobs better. This content helps them learn to turn to you when they need answers. They will start to build a relationship with your company and will become loyal to your brand. Engaging with customers on social media and reading and responding to any comments they leave on your content will also help enhance this relationship.
It moves leads through your funnel faster
When you make a new purchase, you likely research the product first, right? So, if we do it, then we should expect our customers to do the same thing. Inbound marketing methodology accounts for this and helps you capture leads and move them through the sales funnel by offering targeted content at various stages. For example, you might provide general product information and calls to action to those at the top of the funnel. Then at the middle of the funnel, you might provide content specific to your company’s products and services and encourage them to fill out a lead form or subscribe to your blog or a newsletter. And finally, you might provide pricing information to those who are at the bottom of the funnel and are close to closing a deal.
Image Source: HubSpot
It provides you with metrics to measure your marketing efforts are working
One of the hardest parts about marketing is showing your ROI. Inbound marketing can resolve this. This strategy allows you to get measurable results on your campaigns, website, and individual content items. You can pull metrics through Google Analytics to get page views, the amount of time people spend on your site and demographics on your visitors. You can also use your CRM, like HubSpot, to track information on your campaigns.
While it can take some planning to execute an effective inbound marketing strategy, it can be very effective in turning strangers into customers. If you need help getting started, contact Lake One to help you create your inbound marketing strategy, execute it, and measure it!
Do you find yourself spinning your wheels on your inbound marketing strategy? Or maybe you’re just starting to entertain the idea of incorporating it into your overall marketing program and find yourself unable to get it off the ground. You’re not alone. There is no shortage of inbound marketing challenges, but there are far more rewards once you can move past some of those obstacles.
Here are the most common challenges of inbound marketing that prevent you from having a successful strategy.
Incomplete Strategy
When it comes to the various challenges of inbound marketing, this is one you’ll see often. Not for lack of good intentions, but because often people are ready to act before they analyze and plan. Don’t get us wrong, you don’t want to find yourself in a situation of analysis paralysis or placing perfection over progress, but you do need a plan in place before you dive in.
The whole point of an inbound marketing strategy is to attract targeted and qualified leads and turn them into customers, so your strategy needs to be built around those clear buyer personas and have a plan in place for each stage of the buyer’s journey. So if you’re starting a blog, for example, you need to create a content strategy. If you’re planning to do social media marketing, you’ll want to identify the social sites that your personas are utilizing and create a posting schedule. Having clear strategies in place can often eliminate or at least reduce some of the challenges of inbound marketing listed below.
Resources
As you likely know, this challenge isn’t specific to just inbound marketing. Having limited time and resources is often a challenge across the board. There just isn’t enough time (or money) in the day, right? And to put a solid inbound marketing strategy into practice, you need those resources, as it can be pretty labor-intensive.
To implement inbound successfully, it often requires you to create a lot of relevant content and produce it consistently. Keyword being consistent. And more than just creating content like blogs, white papers, and case studies, you’ll need to master SEO, have a social media presence, and don’t forget about email marketing.
If you don’t have the necessary time or resources to dedicate to your marketing rigor, you can often address the issue by partnering with freelance writers or agency partners. By going it alone, you might be inhibiting the success of your inbound campaign.
Persona Alignment
You know all that content we talked about needing to produce? One of the challenges of inbound marketing is that you can’t write content for just anyone. You need to ensure that your content and inbound marketing strategy align with your target audience, AKA, your buyer personas. When you curate content designed specifically for your buyer personas, you might even be able to reduce the amount of necessary content that needs to be created. By narrowing your focus, you put quality over quantity, producing better results, and helping reach your potential customers.
Since resources, or lack thereof, is one of the challenges of inbound marketing, it’s essential to work smarter when it comes to the tools you incorporate into your overall strategy. That said, it can be hard to find the tools that are right-sized for your business, and that will cover all of your needs and that you and your team will actually use. But it can be nearly impossible to execute an effective inbound strategy without a proper marketing tech stack. Tech like:
If you’re lucky (and smart), you’ll utilize a tool that covers multiple bases. When you implement a marketing technology stack, you’re building the framework for a solid inbound marketing strategy. The tools you decide to use are the bones of your plan and enable your team to take your marketing to the next level. This includes:
Better aligned sales and marketing teams
Marketing automation and reduction of manual work
Increased lead generation and the ability to nurture leads
More impactful analytics, insights, and reports
Streamlined processes and the simplification of complex operations
Ability to generate and carry out a comprehensive strategy
Poor User Engagement
Picture it, you have a clear strategy, you have the time and resources you need, you’re aligned perfectly to your personas, and have all the right tech, but you’re still seeing low user engagement. Your strategy must be off, right? Not so fast. What’s the doorway between your prospects, your brand, and a potential sales opportunity? Your website! Before you throw your strategy out the window, be sure to check your website.
A poor website user experience can be a significant weakness and challenges of inbound marketing that will likely be reflected in high bounce rates and potentially low time on page. Be sure to look at things like poor website design, poor mobile-optimization, and poor user experience. If you find you have issues with any or all three of those areas, fix them. It really is that simple.
Here are some ways to make the content and design of your B2B website purposeful in driving conversion:
Create clear CTAs (Call-to-Actions)
Ensure a quality user experience
Use the right language and tone for your buyers
Cluster content strategy around topics
Have supporting pillar content with blog topics
Humanize your images and videos
Learn more about how to master your B2B website strategy and drive growth here.
Misalignment of Sales and Marketing
We already noted the importance of having a clearly defined inbound marketing strategy upfront. Still, all of that can be for not if your internal teams, specifically sales and marketing, aren’t aligned.
One of the common marketing challenges is that the marketing team has one viewpoint of what makes a great lead and the sales team has an entirely different one. If marketing is creating content to attract the wrong target, then the leads will likely have a lower conversion rate into sales. It’s a lose-lose.
209% higher revenue from marketing-generated leads (Marketo)
Win more customers – 67% higher probability that marketing-generated leads will close (Marketo)
Keep those customers – 36% higher retention rates (MarketingProfs)
24% faster three-year revenue growth and 27% more rapid three-year profit growth for B2B (SiriusDecisions)
Expectation Setting
Remember, results take time. Even if you’ve overcome all of the challenges above, you can’t expect to grow your website traffic, write the world’s best content (at scale), generate new, quality leads, and convert them to customers overnight. Your expectations need to be realistic. Whether it’s internal or external stakeholders, make sure that expectations are set up front and well-aligned. Then give it time to work! Work your strategy, be consistent, measure results, and then adjust as needed.
While the challenges of inbound marketing can be tough to overcome, it’s worth the time and energy to implement a successful strategy. But if you find that it’s more than you or your team want to take on, there are resources out there that can help—interested to learn more? Chat with one of our experts and learn how Lake One can help you take your inbound strategy to the next level.
Okay, so if they are interacting with your website, but they aren’t ready to buy, what are they doing? They are likely researching solutions to solve their problems and considering several options prior to making a purchase decision.
The way that we as marketers help leads through the buyer’s journey, is by leveraging email nurture sequences, also known as lead nurturing. Lead Nurturing by definition is the process of building effective relationships with potential customers throughout the buying journey.
One to one direct communication with all B2B leads isn’t scalable, but using nurture email sequencing is, and it’s effective. The caveat? Email nurturing must be strategic.
Here are 8 B2B email nurturing mistakes that will tank your conversion rates and leave your leads dead in the water.
Mistake #1: Not Having a Lead Email Nurturing Campaign at All
Every B2B company needs lead nurturing one way or another. Not convinced? Start by asking yourself these questions:
Do you have content available for download?
Do you have a chatbot?
Do you have a ‘Contact Us’ form on your website?
Do you offer a demo or webinar?
Do you a newsletter sign up?
If you answered yes to any of the above, email nurture sequences are for you. They do some of the heavy lifting by giving the potential buyer the information they need to help themselves, yet still provide them with the opportunity to easily raise their hand for sales.
And let’s face it, if you’re not nurturing them, another company likely will and your lead will be drawn elsewhere.
Mistake #2: Forgoing Strategy and Research
Nothing can turn your leads away faster than poorly targeted random marketing emails. Let strategy and research fuel your persona development and help you craft your marketing plan at large. Email lead nurturing should roll up nicely and be aligned across teams.
If you’re using a marketing automation software like HubSpot, you’ve likely collected data that can be easily inserted into your emails to add a personal touch. It can be as simple as addressing the email with their first name or you can take it a step further. Do you know their role? Their job title? The more insights you can glean from your leads, the more tailored you can make your emails.
Also, here’s a fun fact.
Mistake #4: Death by Sales Pitch
Not all leads are ready to buy the second they begin interacting with your brand, so hang tight on transcribing your elevator pitch.
It’s important to meet personas where they are at in the buyer’s journey by providing relevant, helpful content. Videos, blogs, additional resources, case studies, and customer testimony are perfect tidbits that can be shared via email nurture campaigns.
Are sales pitches ever appropriate? Absolutely. There comes a point in the nurture sequence, which should be determined by user engagement, where you absolutely ‘ask for the sale’. Here are some ways to do that.
Mistake #5: CTA Overload
Every email should have at least one clear call-to-action (CTA), but too many CTAs can be a distraction. Not to mention, it makes for an ugly email.
Pro Tip: If you’re unclear about the purpose of your email, the lead likely will be too. Take a step back and list out the email subject, primary CTA and secondary CTAs if you have them, in a doc prior to building out your sequence.
Mistake #6: Radio Silence When Leads Engage
This one seems simple enough, but you’d be surprised how often email replies go unanswered. If a lead replies to your nurture sequence, where does it go? Who checks the inbox? Whose responsibility is it to reply? Make sure to have a game plan in place prior to launching.
Mistake #7: Thinking Lead Nurturing is One and Done
The more blogs I write, the more I feel like a broken record that’s stuck on research and optimization. But it’s so true. Lead nurture emails are perfect candidates for optimization and should be based on research.
Not sure where to start the optimization process? Let the data be your guide vs intuition. Subject lines, CTAs, and email timing are all great optimization candidates if the data points are lackluster.
Mistake #8: Keeping Sales in the Dark
Lead conversion is a team effort and often a result of both the sales and marketing team working towards the same goals
When it comes to workflows and email nurture, it’s especially critical that sales and marketing align and have a system in place to signify when a lead is actively talking to sales or vice versa. Nothing can confuse or in some cases, annoy your leads more than emails from several people at the same company. Not sure if you’re aligned? Here are some tips to check.
The good news, this can be easily avoided if you’re using HubSpot by leveraging enrollment criteria, lists, and lead status.
A conversion funnel is what we call the path a user follows to convert on a landing page. You can read more about the basics here, but the parts that make up a conversion funnel are the CTA, Landing Page, Thank You Page, and the Thank You Email. As marketers and business people, we want people to convert, but sometimes our marketing underperforms or our guts say that good performance could be better. So then we test. Here are practical ways to implement A/B testing on conversion funnels and improve their performance.
A/B Testing CTAs
CTA testing in HubSpot could not be any easier. By creating two versions of your CTAs- A and B- HubSpot will naturally serve the CTAs equally. When running multivariate CTA testing, we’re focusing the majority of our attention on the Click Rates because clicks are the main goal of a CTA. Submission rates are a secondary factor because they are mostly an indication of your landing page performance. The caveat here is relevance, though. High clicks and low submission rates can be an indication that the promise of your CTA is incongruent with that of your landing page. The messaging of one or the other may need to be adjusted.
In this example, version A and B were created at the same time. After a few months of testing, both have nearly identical views, but the clicks on version B are a full percentage point higher. At this point, since we have a decent amount of data, it might be time to create a new version “A” to see if we can beat or at least match version B.
A/B Testing Landing Pages
HubSpot also makes implementing A/B testing on landing pages super easy. What you’re looking at when testing landing pages are submissions. WordStream tells us we want 10% or higher to be considered among the best. Some of the things you could vary are your headlines and copy. You can even try testing the medium of your offer- guide vs eBook vs infographic etc.- to see what your audience is more compelled to utilize.
One of the biggest advantages to A/B testing a landing page is to see how the length of a form affects your submissions. As marketers, we of course want as much data as we can get, but we also know that there’s a breaking point in what we request. High-value offers have a higher threshold for longer forms. To test, create two variants of your landing page- one with a shorter form and one with a more complex form- to find out where your persona’s threshold is. If you can get away with having a longer form and requesting more information without your submissions rates suffering, go for it.
If you’re not sure where to start with your landing page testing, you can try setting up heat mapping to see exactly how your users are interacting with your page. You might find people are leaving right away (a better headline or more appealing design, perhaps?) or abandoning the form (shorten that sucker up!). Bounce rates can also indicate where to start.
You create Thank You Pages (TYPs) variants the same way you do Landing Pages in HubSpot. So what are you looking for here? Engagement. You want people to access their offer (via a link or a button) and then go on to engage with the site. This is where you have the opportunity to move them through the funnel or charm them with delight. You can create full variants of your TYP or try testing a CTA within your TYP as we discussed above.
A/B Testing Thank You Emails (Kind of)
Thank You Emails are the automated emails that send after a user submits a form. They can be set up directly on the landing page form or via a workflow. Unfortunately, you cannot implement A/B testing of automated emails in HubSpot. But, there are a few ways to get around it. What you want to measure by testing thank you emails are your open rates and click rates.
Open rates are correlated to the strength of your subject line. To test, benchmark your current views and opens then manually make and publish your updates to the same email. Allow your updates to gather data and then measure performance against your benchmarked data. Rinse and repeat.
You can test the click rates in your thank you emails by creating multivariate CTAs as discussed in the CTA section above. You can also manually update the copy and hyperlinks to your “next step” offer (whatever action you’ve included in your TYE that you want your user to take next such as downloading a different offer or contacting you for a consult). Benchmark your stats and revisit often to check the efficacy of your updates.
Conversion funnel by definition can mean a few different things depending on the source, but here at Lake One, when we talk about conversion funnel as it relates to an inbound marketing program, we’re talking about the call-to-action, landing page, thank you page, and follow-up email that supports our inbound efforts.
Read on to learn more about the key components of a conversion funnel along with some insider tips for implementation.
Call-to-Actions
With content consumption at an all-time high among consumers, Call-to-Actions (CTAs) are uber important.
In Marketing, a call-to-action (CTA) is an instruction to your target buyer designed to provoke an immediate response. Figuratively speaking, CTAs are a hand wave or an arrow saying, “Hey! Look over here. We have something you might like!”
CTAs use action words to direct the user. For example, ‘download this white paper now’, ‘click here’ and ‘watch the video’. There are so many examples of CTAs, but a few elements stay consistent across the board.
Headline: Write a header that makes it clear and easy to see what it is you’re offering.
Sub Header: Explain the value to the user of what you’re offering, but keep it concise. Space is limited.
Image: Include an image that relates to what you’re offering to catch the user’s eye and add additional context.
Action Words: Here’s where you actually say what action you want the user to take (download here) typically called out by a button or highlighted differently in some way.
Below is an example of a Lake One’s CTAs. Go ahead. Click on it
Landing Page
Although the majority of B2B businesses are using landing pages, not all landing pages are created equal.
Landing pages are different than your other website pages for a few reasons and should contain at a minimum, the following elements.
No Page Navigation
Landing pages should be designed to be lean mean converting machines and the full navigation menu can distract users. We want them to submit the form and get down to business.
Above the Fold
Keep the main gist of your offer (body copy, image, form, CTA, etc.) above the fold. If the CTA is below the fold and requires a scroll, conversion rates could suffer. You want to make it as easy as possible for the user to convert.
Landing Page Copy
The copy should have a header, a subheader, a few sentences that explain your offering in more detail, and then roughly 3 – 5 supporting bullets that talk about the user benefits of your offer and what the user can expect by submitting the form.
Image
Include an image on your landing page that depicts the offer. The image should be sized appropriately and placed in close proximity to the copy and the CTA making sure to add value and not distract the user from converting.
Forms are an absolute must. They are the method you’ll use to capture the lead’s information in exchange for whatever your offering. Make sure that your ask matches the value of the offer. For example, if you have a form 10 questions deep for an infographic, you’ll likely scare away your user.
Insider Tip: My favorite form field is ‘Role’. Role is imperative because it essentially identifies the lead by persona. Role identification allows us to better tailor our workflows, and, not to mention, it gives us better insight into who is actually submitting our forms and engaging with our content. Oh and the bonus is, we’ve found that ‘Role’ is a light ask for the user as it doesn’t hold the same trepidation that company name or phone number can.
All landing pages must have a CTA that’s clearly visible and intuitive to the user as to what they’re getting and what step to do next.
Truthfully, the above just scratches the surface on the information available on landing pages and best practices. Here is an awesome infographic by Unbouncedescribing additional elements of a landing page if you want to learn more.
Thank You Page
Some conversion funnel implementations don’t use a ‘Thank You Page’ (TYP), but we are big fans. In short, a TYP is just that- a page thanking the now lead for submitting their information via the form to obtain whatever it was you were offering. The TYP also hosts an actual link to the file, guide, case study, etc.
If you’re peeking ahead and seeing that we deploy a follow-up email that also contains the asset link and thinking TYPs are pointless, they aren’t! TYPs have an important job and here are a few highlights on what they bring to your conversion funnel:
Trust: For some leads, submitting information via the form in hopes of obtaining an asset can feel a little uncomfortable. They are likely wondering if they’ll actually get the asset, will they start getting spammed and harassed, etc. TYPs are a chance to build trust with your lead by showing them you’ll give them what you promised and you’ll do it fast.
Conversion: TYPs have prime real estate for additional CTAs. Make sure the CTAs are relevant and helpful in aiding in the next step of the buyer’s journey. Also, insider tip: Make sure the CTAs are not interfering with the user clicking on the asset to download it. It can go from helpful to intrusive quickly.
Brand & Site Exploration: Unlike landing pages, TYPs have a full navigation menu and can incorporate links to the company’s social media pages as well. It’s a chance for the lead to explore more on their own.
Tracking: Without getting too technical for the sake of this post, the TYP is a perfect place to fire your conversion pixel for tracking. Why? Because in order for the TYP to render, the form submission must be completed. You get the lead’s info, they get the asset. Bam. Conversion.
Follow-Up Email
Follow-up emails consist of a direct link to the piece of content (or whatever the CTA promised) and then an additional CTA to interact with your brand an additional way like a newsletter sign up or to check out your blog.
The emails are pretty simple, but we send them for a few reasons.
User Experience: For example, if your offer is a download of a white paper, how convenient for the lead is it to have the white paper sent to their inbox vs needing to download it and save it right away?
Conversion: It opens the door of communication with the lead via email and provides them with more ways to convert and interact with your brand right from their inbox.
Lead Nurturing: Simple follow up emails can be a great segway into lead nurturing as the lead will have already received their first email from you. It seems more natural after sending the high-value first email to continue a cadence.
Key Takeaways
In summary, now that you know about the elements of a conversion funnel, here are a few reminders to take with you if you put the elements above into practice.
SEO. SEO. SEO.
All conversion funnel elements must be optimized for SEO. Think images, landing pages, meta descriptions, URLs, etc. All of it.
Optimize. Rinse. Repeat.
Nothing in marketing is set it and forget it, including conversion funnels. Let the numbers be your optimization compass. They’ll point you to where you need to focus your attention first.
Marketing is for Humans.
When in doubt, always remember you’re content was created for humans and so were your conversion funnels. Where is your eye naturally drawn? Can you understand what you’re offering quickly and easily? A little humanity gut check can go a long way.
You probably already get the gist of inbound marketing if you’re reading this (here’s a refresher if you don’t). But how do you know if it’s right for your business? Here are five telltale signs that inbound marketing is right for you.
1) Your (Potential) Customers are Online
Let’s be honest, your customers are online. Even the majority of B2B purchase decisions are made online now. The expectation of all users is that you have a website that is not only easy on the eyes and simple to navigate but also answers their questions and provides value. Inbound marketing is a way to meet your consumers where they already are (online) rather than trying to find them via hit and miss traditional methods like radio or print.
The biggest complaint from salespeople is usually that they aren’t getting enough leads. Understandable. No leads, no sales. Inbound can be a great solution to that problem.
The inbound method aims to move buyers through the funnel at three different stages: awareness (top), consideration (middle), and decision (bottom). While there are many different ways you can help buyers along this journey, they usually involve collecting information from a user in exchange for whatever you’re offering. This is called lead generation. Once you have the contact info of a user, you can market to them personally via things like workflows to help nudge them along into becoming a customer.
3) You’re Not Getting Enough Website Traffic
Perhaps you’re getting leads through things like cold-calling, word of mouth, or repeat business, and the problem is that your website is a wasteland. This is a big sign inbound might be right for your organization. I’ll try to stay at a high-level here, but the way that inbound moves people along the funnel as mentioned above is by offering useful, informative content that your potential buyers want. This information should be targeted to answer your buyer’s questions, make them feel empowered, and show how your product can solve their problems. So how does this help traffic?
Well, people are actively looking for their answers online. In theory, the content created through an inbound strategy (blogs, webinars, ebooks, etc.) will be filled with the keywords and phrases your users are putting into Google to find your type of solution. By creating content that matches these search queries, your content/website will start ranking higher and higher in the search results.
A bonus to inbound is that search engines favor sites that post fresh content regularly. Therefore, posting new blog content frequently in and of itself can help your search rankings.
4) Your Competitors are Beating You
How can they beat you? Let me count the ways. It could be that your competitor’s website is a work of user-experience art, smartly crafted to guide users into a purchase while yours is… not. Or maybe it’s that they rank higher on every search term than you do, getting all the clicks you wish you had. OR maybe it’s that your competition is encroaching on revenue that used to be yours after they started buying up ad space you didn’t know was even available.
Inbound? Yeah… it can help with all of those things.
5) You Want to Generate Thought Leadership and Authority
Another sign that inbound marketing might be right for your company is that you want to generate thought leadership or be known as an authority in your field. Thought leaders are, “the informed opinion leaders and the go-to people in their field of expertise.” Inbound inherently generates thought leadership (assuming you do in fact know your industry and are able to produce high-quality content) by the sheer volume of content you produce. Your content naturally gives you a platform to show off your industry knowledge and expertise.
Key Takeaways that Inbound Marketing Might be Right for You
Your would-be customers are online (but you’re missing them).
You’re not generating enough leads to make sales happy.
Your website traffic isn’t good enough.
The competition is smoking you.
You want to be a thought leader and authority in your industry.
If you’ve been paying attention, the most likely 2019 marketing trends will come as no surprise. With an over-arching theme to connect to consumers personally, we expect 2019 to be filled with content intended to engage and meet consumers where they are rather than getting in their face. Here are the four trends we’d like to call attention to for the upcoming year.
