4 Understated Inbound Marketing Techniques
Just when you think you’ve heard everything about inbound marketing, an expert comes up with a new strategy that seems to be taking the industry by storm. How do you know what works best and where you should invest your money? When does an inbound marketing strategy turn into something that’s saturated and used by everyone? These are important questions that need to be asked anytime you are implementing an inbound marketing strategy.
Before you test several different strategies and try to re-invent the wheel, let’s take a look at which strategies work best.
It’s All About Meeting Demand
Inbound marketing is first and foremost about meeting demand for consumers. As a consumer searches for something, you simply have to show up to earn their business. The intent from the consumer is there and they are looking for a business like yours to fulfill their need. While it is all a bit more complicated than this, the nuts and bolts boil down to meeting demand.
Search Engine Optimization
As we’ve covered in another post about SEO, this is one of the most fundamental inbound marketing tactics you can put in place for your business. Search engine optimization, usually represented as SEO, this strategy allows you to show pages in Google search results for particular search terms. When a consumer searches for a product or service, a webpage shows up in the natural results section. As it is clicked, the website has the chance to earn the consumer’s business.
SEO takes a lot of patience to work well, but it is the absolutely best inbound marketing strategy for a long-term ROI.
Pay Per Click Ads
In the same spirit of meeting a consumer’s search in Google, pay per click advertising allows businesses to avoid being patient with an SEO strategy and “skip the line” to the top of results. Of course, skipping the line comes with a cost and is how we get to the nomenclature of “pay per click“. As such, every time a consumer clicks on an ad in the search engine, the advertiser is charged. And depending on the industry you’re in, the cost per click (CPC) can be as high as $75.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is another inbound technique that allows you to meet the demand of consumers. With affiliate marketing, you publish content on 3rd party websites and then pay those websites a commission when someone visits your website and purchases a product or service. With this strategy, you are essentially leaning on the credibility and popularity of another website to drive traffic and awareness to yours. The demand is there, you just need to be present.
Email Marketing
Finally, as a bit of a passive marketing strategy, email marketing can work wonders for driving new leads for a business. Using a popular email service provider, businesses can send out email blasts to their customer base, purchase lists of emails from professional organizations and drive leads in their sleep. Emails can be scheduled through most programs, making this an easy strategy to implement for just about any business.
Where Should You Start?
Begin the inbound marketing process by evaluating your budget and competition. If you compete in a very saturated industry, you’ll need a sizable budget to go head-to-head with other companies in the space. Remember, inbound marketing doesn’t happen over night. Be patient, give it some time and you’ll start to see the results.
