Lead generation. It seems so simple, yet many businesses struggle to consistently generate new opportunities. In an ever changing digital media landscape, how can your business break through the noise?
Don’t you just love being caught off guard by a random stranger trying to sell you something over the phone? Or having to sit through a commercial break while trying to watch your favorite TV show (these are rhetorical questions)?
Cold calling, tv ads and other traditional marketing strategies are no longer effective (all commercials are good for nowadays is to take a quick scroll through your Instagram feed).
It’s time for traditional marketing methods to take a back seat to a more modern marketing approach: inbound marketing.
What is inbound marketing?
According to Hubspot, the inbound methodology is the method of growing your organization by building meaningful, lasting relationships with consumers, prospects, and customers.
Sounds great, right?
Of course it does. That is why inbound marketing has emerged as the primary lead generation tactic in recent years.
In this article, we’ll outline three inbound lead generation strategies to help your business grow.
Create and Publish Unique Content
Content is by far the most important aspect of your inbound marketing strategy.
However, your content should not consist of generic, self-serving articles or videos. While it may rank well with the search engines, your customers are going to be able to sense the insincerity.
You need to work to create consistent, high-quality, and engaging content that is unique and identifiable to your brand. This will help you build trust with your audience, improve conversions, connect with your customers and eventually generate leads.
In fact, according to the Content Marketing Institute, 70 percent of B2B Marketers use content marketing to successfully generate demand/leads.
Strong SEO Strategy
Content is also the driver behind other aspects of your marketing strategy, primarily, your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.
However, SEO is more than just content. To maximize your results from SEO, focus on simple on-page tactics.
Make sure your content is optimized in a way that the search engines can recognize the best traffic to send to you.
Start by identifying specific keywords related to your industry that you would like your website to rank for. Then insert those keywords into your content in a natural way so it flows with the rest of the article.
There are other aspects of on-page SEO, such as meta titles/descriptions, headers, alt tags and more, but keyword optimization will help lay a good foundation for your SEO strategy.
Effective Email Marketing
Email marketing continues to be one of the more reliable lead generation strategies. According to Campaign Monitor, you can expect to earn $44 for every dollar spent on email marketing.
Similar to your SEO strategy, an effective email marketing campaign ties back to the quality of your content. Are you spamming your subscribers with useless content? Or are you sending them valuable information that they can’t get anywhere else?
Also, when it comes to email marketing, don’t always focus on pitching your subscribers your product or service (at least not right away). Be patient and build value over time. Eventually, you will have peaked their interest to the point where it will be much easier to convince them to buy.
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If you’re looking to take your lead generation to the next level, you want to make sure you’re putting your best foot forward.
Hopefully we’ve convinced you that inbound marketing is the best way to go.
You need to understand what your customers need and build trust with compelling content. Make it easier for them to find you on the web by implementing SEO. And, once you’ve set the hook, slowly reel them in with effective email marketing.
Think you’ll use any of these strategies to grow your business? Feel free to contact us for more help in determining the right inbound lead generation campaign for your business.