10 Inbound Marketing Tips And Tricks You Need To Know

10 Inbound Marketing Tips And Tricks You Need To Know

Inbound marketing is essential for having a successful business. But how exactly can you maximize the results of your inbound marketing strategy? Here are the ten inbound marketing tips and tricks you need to know that will help you take your campaigns to a new level.

Differences Between Inbound and Outbound Marketing

First and foremost, it’s essential to understand the differences between inbound and outbound marketing. By understanding these differences, you can better craft your inbound marketing strategy to work more effectively:

• While outbound marketing focuses on sales, inbound marketing is primarily about high-quality content.
• Outbound marketing aims to convert new users, while inbound marketing strives to generate brand awareness and build long-term relationships with customers.
• Outbound marketing usually takes more time and money than inbound marketing.

The Stages of Inbound Marketing

Along with the core distinctions between inbound and outbound marketing, you need to understand the stages of inbound marketing. The techniques presented in this article can be used either at one or several of these stages:

• Attract: First, you need to attract your target audience through your activities (e.g., guest posts on other websites that direct users to your site).
• Convert: Next, you need to convert users by making them perform a specific action (e.g., sign up for your email newsletter).
• Close: Third, you need to turn leads into customers by aiming for sales (e.g., send emails to subscribers to encourage them to make a purchase).
• Delight: Lastly, you need to reward customers for their purchases to develop long-term relationships (e.g., offer discounts to returning customers).

#1 Conduct Customer Surveys and Interviews

You probably already know about the essentials of inbound marketing, such as having a solid content strategy. However, to truly get the most out of your inbound marketing campaigns, you need to pay attention to details. Thus, the first thing you should do is conduct customer surveys and interviews to understand your target audience better. While analyzing data about your current customers is a sure way to get statistical data, surveys and interviews can give you more insight into things you don’t have a clear idea about.
For instance, interviews can help you better understand the personal feelings your customers have about the business moves you have made, the products you are offering, and so much more. Using the insights you get from surveys and interviews, you can create inbound marketing campaigns that will be more effective than your past efforts. For example, you can personalize discounts to appeal to specific segments of your audience.

#2 Rely on Visual Content More

As mentioned above, inbound marketing heavily relies on content marketing. The common misconception is that you should only focus on textual content such as articles and blog posts. However, it’s better to rely on visual content, especially now that videos and infographics rule the Internet. Customers are used to seeing visual content, so many of them are more likely to take an interest in your brand after watching a funny video on TikTok rather than reading a lengthy white paper on your blog.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that you should solely rely on visual content. It is about combining textual and visual content and other forms such as audio content (e.g., podcasts). Using infographics, charts, GIFs, videos, and your articles can help you promote engagement and encourage your audience to interact with your content. Adding visuals to an otherwise textual piece of content makes it more eye-catching and helps it stand out among the sea of content created by other brands.

#3 Integrate Statistics into Your Content

While many people won’t be interested in white papers or case studies and will instead prefer social media posts, you might still have a segment of your target audience interested in such lengthy data-driven pieces. Therefore, it’s good to start integrating statistics into your content. You can do this for all kinds of content, even your social media posts. For example, an infographic or graph explaining a particular process or fact can be of much value to your audience.

Unfortunately, many businesses struggle with creating high-quality long-form content that relies on statistics and research. This is why it’s a good idea to look for a professional writer for copywriting who can create such content for you. An experienced writer in your field will be able to perform the necessary research for a white paper or case study and then create a piece of content that will be interesting to read for the kind of audience you have in mind.

#4 Start Guest Posting Regularly

A large part of inbound marketing is about raising brand awareness, improving brand recognition, and attracting potential customers. This is why it’s important to utilize different techniques to achieve these goals. One of the more popular practices is guest posting which can be especially effective when you do it regularly. If you develop a habit of writing guest posts and follow a schedule doing this, you can get a steady stream of potential customers flocking to your website.

One of the essential things about guest posting is choosing the right websites and blogs to write for. These can be niche sites as long as they have an engaged audience. Engaged readers are the ones that will be likely to check out your website after reading a blog post from you. If they see that your content is of high quality and value to them, they will want to get more of it. On the other hand, a blog with an audience that isn’t very engaged will be less likely to help you attract more potential customers.

#5 Host Webinars for Potential Customers

Another integral part of inbound marketing involves developing long-term relationships with your customers. This is precisely why you need to use techniques that will cater to those segments of your audience that have already converted users. One method you can use for this is hosting webinars. People who got interested in your brand but haven’t made a purchase yet need to be engaged to encourage them to make a purchase eventually – and a webinar is perfect for this.

Interestingly, you can host webinars for returning customers or even those who have never heard of your brand before (i.e., to make users aware of your brand). This makes hosting webinars quite a versatile technique, but you still need to customize such webinars the right way to market them to users at different stages of inbound marketing. It’s also best to host free webinars to be affordable to everyone.

#6 Partner with Influencers Long-Term

Similarly to guest posting, influencer marketing can be an incredibly effective technique for attracting potential customers, raising brand awareness, and improving brand recognition, among other things. This tactic has become more common in recent years than ever, but many brands still don’t treat it seriously. To make the most of influencer marketing, you need to develop long-term relationships with influencers rather than partnering with them for one-time or short-term projects.

In other words, you need to pick influencers carefully and make them brand ambassadors for your company. It’s crucial to have a clear set of rules for all the content posted by your partner influencers, so you can hire a professional writer from the writing services reviews site Writing Judge to help you create those rules. All the details, such as the brand tone influencers should use and the quality requirements for the content, need to be included in these rules or guidelines. This will ensure consistency for all your influencer marketing.

#7 Utilize Your Network

Surprisingly, many marketers and business owners seem to overlook the power of personal networks when it comes to inbound marketing. However, if you are starting, utilizing your network can give you the boost needed to successfully kickstart your brand’s marketing campaign. Your LinkedIn connections, emails of your contacts, and your social media followers can all help you, directly and indirectly, promote your brand. The critical part here is not to be annoying with your marketing when using your network.

For instance, it’s great to have some posts on your personal Instagram account about opening your business. Still, if you start posting only about your company, even your closest friends might start muting your posts to avoid seeing all the “spam.” The same principle should be applied to the emails you send to your contacts informing them about your brand. Likewise, the employees at your company can also use their networks, but just like you, they need to be careful not to cross the line into annoying territory.

#8 Promote Yourself as a Brand

You’ve probably heard of personal branding, which is all about presenting yourself in a specific way and crafting your image. And while you may be focusing on your company’s brand image right now, you might also find it helpful to promote yourself as a brand. If you are already the face of your company and well-known in certain circles, it can be beneficial to shape your business branding around your persona.

There are many examples of this already. For instance, Steve Jobs was very closely associated with the Apple brand, while most people know Mark Zuckerberg as the person behind Facebook. Some public figures such as Michelle Obama and Oprah have also used personal branding for their business endeavors. Having an appealing persona can help you raise your company’s brand awareness and recognition and attract more potential clients.

#9 Aim for Viral Content

Because social media has become one of the primary digital marketing channels for many brands, many companies now aim for virality. Indeed, viral content is perfect for inbound marketing. The only problem is that it is usually hard to predict what will go viral. There is no specific formula, even though there are certain things you can do to your content to get more chances for it to go viral.

The best approach here is to try and try again before you understand how to make viral content. Hire expert writers from the writing services reviews site Trust My Paper to create high-quality content for your marketing campaigns. Explain to the writers which detail you to want them to focus on to give your content that viral aspect. Experienced writers will be able to balance quality and those specific requirements for virality.

#10 Don’t Underestimate Your Audience

Last but not least, never underestimate your audience. This might be a vague tip, but it is something that many brands seem to forget about when it comes to inbound marketing. Your audience is much more intelligent than you think and can understand complex concepts in most cases. On the other hand, customers are more demanding than ever, so many brands now have to address any controversies they get into.

When creating content for your inbound marketing campaigns, always think about how to catch your audience’s attention. When you have their attention, create experiences for them that they won’t forget. They have to want to come back for more, again and again, to become returning customers who are loyal to you. Eventually, such customers could become brand ambassadors for you simply by spreading the word about your products or services.

Conclusion

To summarize, there are quite a few different techniques you can use as a part of your inbound marketing strategy. What will work for your business largely depends on your audience, goals, and many other factors. But the more you integrate these tactics into your campaigns, the better you will become at them. Use these tips and tricks to improve inbound marketing and improve the results of your current marketing activities.