Inbound marketing is taking the world by storm, but as many new practices do it has people questioning whether it’s right for their business. Before we get into whether or not it’s a good fit let’s review what inbound marketing is. In last week’s blog post we found that inbound marketing is (in most basic forms) the use of content to attract prospective clients and customers. This content is used in a process known as the inbound marketing methodology that progresses prospective customers from strangers to promoters.
Now that you’re refreshed on the basic understanding of inbound, let’s go over whether or not your business can succeed with it. In fact it’s pretty simple; any business can succeed with the implementation of inbound marketing. Whether you’re a financial management firm or a flooring expert you can have success with inbound marketing. All you need to do is create content that people find useful and share that content to the correct audience.
When first starting out it can be hard to know what kind of content you should create. This is why you need to fully understand your potential clients and customers. Once you know the pressure points, problems, and concerns of a prospective client you can tailor the content to them. If you own a flooring company and research on previous customers proves that the decision maker of the household is the wife; then you now know to customize your content to her. If you find that the common concern of prospective buyers is cost, you should create content that highlights the value of replacing floors in a home.
Once you have the content created you need to publish and promote it where your target audience will see it and take action. The best places to do both is on social media, search engines, and answer sites. Social media gives users the ability to reach a large audience with a push of the button. It has such a large impact because once you share a status it gets seen by your followers, then if your followers like/comment/share that post others that are not directly following you see that their friend liked/commented/shared it. Search engines are also helpful outlets to promote high level content where you have the visitor take immediate action like a landing page. To be able to promote on a search engine like Google there is a charge, but only if a prospect clicks on your ad. Another way to talk directly to those who are prospective clients is by posting answers in question sites. If you find questions on sites like Yahoo Answers that pertain directly to the content that you’ve created; answer the question and provide a link to that content.
As you can see inbound marketing can be used by any business in any industry to successfully convert prospects into customers. Though there is one downside to inbound marketing; time. It can be time consuming create and promote content, and that is just the basics of inbound. When you add on SEO work and a professionally designed and optimized website it can take forever before you see measureable results. That’s why we’re here, Crush My Market is an inbound marketing agency that specializes in getting local businesses more leads, customers, and revenue. Our team has the experience and the tools necessary to make your inbound marketing campaign a success!
