How to Make Inbound Marketing Work for Your Business

It’s no secret that traditional marketing techniques are no longer relevant or effective. With more than 200 million users on the Federal TradeCommission’s Do Not Call registry, telemarketing has become the dinosaur of the marketing industry. Likewise, studies show that 44 percent of direct mail is thrown away without even being opened.

Statistics like these have led to today’s digital marketing revolution — and of all the latest trends and strategies, inbound marketing has quickly become one of the internet’s most valuable and versatile marketing tools, thanks to its ability to attract and engage new customers through dynamic online content.

Here’s why inbound marketing is essential for your business — along with four surefire strategies to attract new customers.

What Is Inbound Marketing, and Why Is It Successful?

Inbound marketing uses articles, blogs, e-books, videos and other types of internet content to get your message across. These posts can show up in just about any type of web page, including news-oriented websites, social media sites, blogs and product-sponsored sites.

Inbound marketing content itself is typically engaging and informative and can be written in a variety of ways. Once the article is ready for posting, web page designers can create relevant ads to surround the content that pertain in some way to the topic or promote items that would appeal to the type of person reading the article. For example, a content article on Fashion Week in Milan would serve as an excellent marketing page for high-end clothing retailers. Likewise, links to sponsored products can be placed within the content to generate clicks.

When used in tandem with relevant content and geared toward the appropriate target market, inbound marketing can generate thousands of new customers for a product, store or service.

Here are four of today's most successful inbound marketing strategies:

1. Native Advertising

Native advertising involves first creating an engaging content article, then filling it with links and keywords and/or surrounding it with relevant ads. A famous example is this article from the satirical newspaper/website The Onion: “Woman Going to Take Quick Break After Filling Out Name, Address on Tax Forms.” When first published, the article was surrounded by ads from H&R Block.

2. Marketing Automation + HubSpot 

Marketing automation has revolutionized the industry by fully automating drudge tasks — such as sending out emails and posting on social media — but when used strategically, automation can be an invaluable tool. When used with AI software and big data analytics, marketing automation can program your system to send out emails to segmented target markets at optimum times, when there's a greater chance of generating a response.

HubSpot is an inbound marketing/sales software that is considered the gold standard of cutting-edge inbound marketing services. By garnering relevant data, HubSpot marketing automation can help you create articles, blogs, e-books and videos that are optimized, via keywords and placement, to reach your target market.

4. Keyword-Rich Content

Using analytics, you can identify keywords and search phrases for your content, which in turn can significantly improve your search engine rankings and help you reach your target market.

5. Digital Marketing Agencies

A full-service marketing agency can help you optimize the tools you already own, as well as advise you on the best new software tools for boosting lead generation and sales. Full service advertising agencies also offer one-on-one training and seminars on topics such as:

• Content marketing strategies
• Garnering the power of AI, automation and big data
• Keyword enrichment

Likewise, an expert B2B marketing agency can offer these same services to B2B companies — services that will help them increase sales and maximize ROI profits.

By utilizing these powerful inbound marketing strategies, you can optimize your search engine results, increase lead generation and sales, boost your ROI, and reach and retain a wealth of new customers. Best of all, inbound marketing, like all digital marketing, is still a work in progress. Be sure to stay tuned as more successful strategies are developed in the near future.

Interested in learning more about Inbound Marketing? Attend HubSpot's Inbound Marketing Conference as my guest September 25-28. More info about the conference here: www.inbound.com. As my guest you will get a full conference pass for 50% off.

To be considered email me at staci@uncommonmarketingworks.com.