5 Inbound Marketing Best Practices

Inbound marketing is an effective way to bring additional benefits to your company. When done correctly, it easily boosts the ROI. To get the most out of every encounter, however, there are some best practices that should be focused upon so that maximized results can be achieved. Whether you’re already doing inbound marketing or you’re thinking that it is time to get started, then here is what you’re going to want to do.

1. Be original with your content.

There is a lot of bad content on the internet today. Worthless content that makes people shake their heads, close their browser, and boot up their favorite streaming app. Far too many inbound marketing plans are writing for search engine rankings and other technical needs and not focusing on the reader.

You need to focus on the reader.

Original content that is engaging and entertaining is what will grab someone’s attention and hold it. Anyone can write random keywords and make them into sentences and call it a blog post. You need to tell a story with every post instead that increases the presence of your brand through the value of each written word. As an extra bonus, distributing content is usually free.

2. Get rid of the ineffective offline marketing efforts.

Direct mail campaigns and cold calling have their place. Sometimes they can be done pretty effectively, but that is growing more rare with every passing day. The labor alone to create professional media that people will want to read is expensive and most people just toss away junk mail or hang up on cold callers they don’t know. Get rid of that stuff and make your inbound marketing more efficient.

There are some ineffective online marketing efforts that you likely have as well. Email marketing campaigns, certain social media campaigns, or forum blasting could all just be wasting your time. Use analytics to determine what is working, what is not, and where you should be focusing your future efforts.

3. Where people land is more important then where they go.

An active website should be one of the highest priorities of your inbound marketing efforts. People today use websites for research purposes anonymously so they can get a feeling of who a business is and what kind of value they have to offer. Inbound marketing campaigns that take a value-centric focus on the content that is provided typically perform better than standard sites alone.

This means that your landing page matters. You need to be able to pull all of your potential prospects together and put them onto the same kind of landing page. The internet will put people onto virtually page of your website through organic search results. Your job is to centralize those results so that a single landing page becomes the primary point of entry.

Think of it like a house. You want people to come in through the front door. You don’t want them coming through the upstairs bedroom window. The search engines might guide them to the window, but your inbound marketing will lead them to the front door.

4. Never underestimate the power of a good call to action.

What causes inspiration? A call to action. “Act now!” “Start using this today!” “Buy before they’re all gone!” These are all calls to action. Not very subtle ones, but CTAs nonetheless. Your inbound marketing efforts should have them sprinkled throughout every piece of content that is produced. You never know what bit of a video someone may watch or what paragraph someone may read. Without a CTA, they won’t be pressed into action.

Does it make sense to have every other sentence in a video script be a call to action? Of course not. You can, however, put a CTA below the video that is easily seen. You can transition paragraphs in such a way that it inspires action. Don’t be pushy, but do put in an effort to encourage leads to do something. Otherwise you’re just encouraging them to do nothing.

5. Make the entire journey through your funnel as effortless as possible.

It doesn’t take much to get an inbound customer to change their mind. Something as simple as a loading error can be enough to stop the sales process cold. Nurture your leads every step of the way by eliminating as many obstacles as possible from their experience.

An inbound marketing campaign can be challenging at first, especially if you don’t have the right information to make good decisions. Use analytics, track your results, and use these best practices wisely. In doing so, you may just find that your marketing efforts will boost your bottom line.