If you have a small business and are looking for useful guidelines on how to attract more leads and customers, you should find as many ways as possible to leverage the power of inbound marketing. This is a powerful and cost-effective way to grow your business, get website traffic, and build authority in your industry.
How Marketing Has Changed
Inbound marketing was once a novel concept, mainly embraced by early adopters. Today, however, it's become an essential part of marketing for businesses of all sizes and types. It provides a more economical alternative to the traditional sales funnel, which usually relies on costly advertising campaigns on TV, radio or newspapers. Under this model, large companies had a big advantage due to their massive budgets. The internet, however, has made it easier for smaller businesses to compete.
Inbound marketing tactics are based on creating relevant content for potential customers. Examples of this include blog posts, articles, videos, images and anything else that informs your audience. What sets inbound marketing apart is that it motivates your customers to find you. It also helps build word-of-mouth or referral marketing, where your customers help spread the word about your business on your behalf.
Today's customers are more likely to try products and businesses based on recommendations rather than traditional advertising. This is the age of referral marketing and networking. Social media has played an enormous role in this, as have customer review sites. One of the key distinctions of inbound marketing is that today's customer's don't like to be interrupted by constant pitches and aggressive sales tactics. Inbound marketing is dedicated to helping people make informed decisions rather than bombarding them with ads. Fortunately, this strategy is not only more effective, but it's also cheaper and simpler for small businesses to apply.
Key Inbound Marketing Principles
Here are some of the inbound marketing principles and strategies that can help you build your business.
- What Makes You Different? You need to distinguish yourself from the millions of other businesses that do what you do, or something similar.
- You Need a Plan - Without a clearly defined plan, it's impossible to set goals and know if you're reaching them.
- Make the Right Preparations - Inbound marketing isn't a quick fix but a long-term strategy. Before you begin, you need a well-considered plan.
- Understand Your Customer - Knowing your customer is the main prerequisite for running a successful business. You should have a customer persona, so you know exactly who is most likely to buy your products or services. You need to know these people's pain points, where they spend time online, their budget, and other essential information.
- Your Website is the Center of Your Digital Presence - Whatever else you're doing, you have to focus on your website as the digital center of your business. You need to make sure your website is user-friendly and has that the design and content is a good match for your customers.
- SEO: Making Sure People Find You - SEO or search engine optimization is a fundamental aspect of inbound marketing. You need to find keywords that your customers are searching for and create engaging and SEO-friendly content for your website. It's also essential to apply on-page SEO, which includes factors such as page titles, sitemaps, URLs, and images.
- Traffic Building Strategies - Social media, video, and email marketing can all help you build your authority as well as grow your website's traffic.
- Convert Leads Into Customers - This includes testing landing pages, measuring the quality of your leads.
If you want to learn more about these strategies, a great source to consult is The Small Business Owner's Guide to Inbound Marketing. This groundbreaking book covers the above topics in more detail and gives you practical tips on how to implement these and other inbound marketing tactics.
Get your copy of The Small Business Owner's Guide To Inbound Marketing.
For more information about inbound marketing tips for small businesses, or to schedule your free digital marketing consultation, please call 720.248.8185, e-mail info@friedmansocialmedia.com, or click here.
Please note: The Friedman Group is an inbound marketing agency based in Denver, Colorado, and we work with professionals and business owners across the U.S. Our digital marketing services include: inbound marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, and digital marketing strategy and implementation.
