I Love Inbound – Digital Marketing Strategies for Attracting Your Target Audience

Since I joined this firm, we’ve been putting inbound marketing into everything we do. I love it. We are anticipating the needs of our clients using data and analytics. We are implementing best practices to raise interest among their target audiences.

The feeling is mutual; our clients love it too. Focusing on inbound marketing is such a difference maker in each aspect of a company’s digital presence.

What do I mean when I say inbound marketing? To me, it’s more of a mentality; a methodology. Inbound is the mindset that everything you do to market your business should work to bring your target audience one step closer to interacting with you. From how you structure the wireframes in your website, to the verbiage of your banner advertisements, all of it will determine if you are engaged by your target audience or not.

If you apply the inbound mentality to each marketing decision you make, you will be working towards increased engagement with your company and open the door for more interactions with consumers.

Excited yet? Well, I can barely contain myself. I’m bouncing in my seat just typing this out. I love inbound so much, that I wanted to share with you some strategies for implementing inbound methodology to different aspects of marketing. This is the first installment in my inbound marketing series: Digital Marketing Strategies for Attracting Your Target Audience.

Social Media

It’s obvious that businesses need to have a solid social media presence, but posting just to post can be fatal. Too many mediocre posts will muck up the social feeds of your followers and you will be known as the business that posts way too often.

Hubspot reported that posting more than once a day will lead to fewer clicks to your content. Furthermore, if you only post 1-5 times a month, posts clicks almost double. The idea is that less is more when it comes to frequency. While this may be true for some, I believe that if you apply inbound methodology to your social media posts, you can post as much as you want. Just make sure you practice quality over quantity.

Think about your favorite person to follow on Twitter or Instagram. Why do you like them? Chances are, they put out some of the best content on the web. Do you mind it if they post more than once a day? Probably not if their content is great. They are using inbound methodology with their social posting. They are ensuring that you, the target audience, will be continuously engaged with their content, and thus their brand. Be like them.

Think inbound and post quality content that will appeal to your target. Nothing else will do. I am telling you, this is the best way to get people to buy in to your brand.

Paid Advertising

Any paid ads you run need to have a value message associated with them. This again seems obvious, but many ad strategies are constructed around brand awareness.

Companies often run mass awareness campaigns like television commercials, radio commercials, billboards, print ads in publications, paid search/PPC, and banner advertising on popular websites. But what good is an awareness campaign if you aren’t actually catching the attention of your target audience and providing them value?

Modern technology has given us the ability to obtain what we want when we want it. Businesses are taking advantage of this and now begin customer relationships with providing the customer with something valuable. With all the choices available to the consumer, one that provides value up front will increase their odds of being chosen.

This value may be a blog post about a common issue consumers in their industry face, or it could be a free eBook download or coupon. Consumers won’t care about your banner ad if there is nothing in it for them. Think inbound and provide value for your target audience with any type of paid advertising you use.

Website Content / ( SEO )

No matter how you get visitors to your website, you need to make sure that you have the right content to keep them there. Your website is your best salesperson. The messaging you put within will dictate how the sales call (so to speak) will go.

Using the inbound methodology here means including content that guides the visitor through the site, ultimately ending on a call-to-action. Whether you are providing information about your business and industry or showing off your product catalog, each piece of website content should bring the visitor one step closer to a purchasing decision.

When thinking about your website’s search engine optimization ( SEO ), you will typically be working in accordance to SEO best practices. This is great for inbound, as SEO has evolved into being a UX-centric system.

By focusing on providing quality written content with plenty of industry keywords, you are helping visitors understand your brand. When you work on improving website speed and device compatibility, you are making it easier for your visitors to interact with your company.

Basically, anything that improves SEO is in line with the inbound methodology. For more information about SEO best practices, view this article on getting ranked #1 on Google.

Email Marketing

Another commonly used form of digital marketing is email marketing. This is another one of those push campaigns used for mass awareness, but is also used to promote special deals or events. This is yet another marketing tactic that can be maximized with the inbound methodology.

Much like with paid ads, using inbound in email marketing means offering something of value in the email. The biggest issue with using email marketing is that it is easily overlooked in a crowded inbox.

To combat this, marketers need to create value within the email and get the attention of the recipient. Provide online discounts or gated offers, and make sure you are using an attention grabbing call-to-action. Provide links to blog posts so your email list can engage with your business on an informational level. Use personal, action verbiage when creating your header. Instead of “Get 15% off your next plumbing service”, use “John, you are paying too much for plumbing!”

According to inbound marketing professionals at Hubspot, using action language increases open rate and clicks to your call-to-action within the email. Whatever you do, give your contacts a reason to engage with your business.

Inbound and digital marketing are perfect for each other. They are the Jay-Z and Beyonce of web presence and just as flawless. By thinking inbound at every turn, you will optimize this digital presence and add constant value to your brand. Next week, I will go over inbound’s benefits when it comes to web design and development. Stay tuned kiddos!