Five Inbound Marketing Resources Every Marketer Should Know

The Importance of Hiring an Integrated Marketing Agency

December 5, 2024/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Strategy /by Dan Gartlan

There are hundreds of tactics you can use to advertise your business, whether you’re using inbound or outbound marketing. As a result, it can take a long time and a lot of effort to create and execute a successful marketing strategy — especially if you want long-term results. It’s why many companies will work with a marketing agency instead of trying to do it themselves.

However, you’ll find that most marketing agencies focus on specific types of advertising. For example, some agencies focus on direct marketing, while others focus on building websites. If you want to work with a single agency that can handle all of your marketing needs, then you should consider working with an integrated marketing agency.

What is Integrated Marketing?

Integrated marketing is the practice of making sure all of your marketing efforts are aligned to deliver the same core message. It’s an overarching strategy that uses various channels to reach people at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Integrated marketing allows businesses to deliver a consistent message across different mediums, including print and digital media.

For example, a company might use a TV commercial to draw attention to its new website. For this to work, the message conveyed on the TV ad must be consistent with the messaging on the website. If the tagline or logo on the commercial is even slightly different than what’s on your website, it will confuse people.

What is an Integrated Marketing Agency?

Integrated marketing agencies use a holistic approach to marketing. They can address all the advertising needs that a company might have. Basically, it means that they can do everything you need as far as marketing goes so that you don’t have to hire multiple agencies. For example, they can help:

Build your brand and design branding elements.
Develop a traditional outbound marketing strategy.
Develop an inbound marketing strategy.
Create your inbound and outbound marketing materials (from print ads to your website)
Develop a public relations (PR) strategy to engage with your target audience across many channels.

What are the Benefits of an Integrated Marketing Agency?

There are many benefits to working with an integrated marketing agency instead of an agency that has more specific focuses (such as an agency that only produces commercial videos). The following are a few of the primary benefits of using an integrated marketing agency:

1. A more cost-effective marketing solution

Hiring multiple agencies to address different parts of your marketing strategy can be expensive. An integrated marketing agency can take care of all your marketing needs, making it a more cost-effective option.

2. A more cohesive long-term marketing plan

Because an integrated marketing agency is experienced in every facet of marketing, they can audit your existing strategy. Additionally, they will consider your company’s needs and audience to develop a more unified long-term marketing strategy.

3. More personalized services

Most agencies use a general blueprint to implement their solutions. As such, their marketing efforts follow a guideline or template for every one of their clients. Integrated marketing agencies customize their marketing solutions to the specific needs of the clients they’re working with. Futhermore they will take a unified approach that will result in a comprehensive and unique marketing strategy.

4. Branding consistency across all channels

If you lack branding consistency (for example, if your messaging and tone is different from one channel to the next), it will hurt your brand identity. Consequently, people will get confused about who you are and what you offer.

An integrated marketing agency can help develop a unique branding strategy so that your business will have a consistent message across all channels. By using integrated marketing, you’ll ensure that your brand identity remains consistent.

5. A better understanding of the buyer’s journey

Integrated marketing agencies are experienced with both traditional and digital marketing. As a result, they have a greater understanding of the buyer’s journey and how to reach customers at every stage of their journey.

6. More effective cross-channel marketing campaigns

Marketing campaigns that function separately won’t be nearly as effective as if they were designed to work together. Integrated marketing agencies are more capable of creating cross-channel marketing campaigns designed to achieve a shared goal.

Our Integrated Marketing Solutions

Here at Stevens & Tate, we offer integrated marketing solutions tailor-made to your company’s needs. Not only do we take into account your business and your customers, but we also take into account your budget. With that in mind, the following are some of the integrated marketing solutions that we offer:

Storybranding:

We can help develop your brand and brand story by identifying competitive advantages and mission statement. We can also create a slogan and tagline, identify your value propositions, and develop your message and story.

Marketing strategy:

We develop a comprehensive marketing strategy by implementing a meticulous process. This process includes a thorough consultation, SWOT analysis, budget evaluation, marketing plan development and execution, communications strategy, and messaging approach.

Research:

We perform thorough market research to help build your marketing strategy. This research includes competitive market analysis, brand audits, target audience segmentation, website analytics, customer experience research, and more.

SEO and social:

We can develop comprehensive social media and SEO strategies to increase brand awareness and authority. We use various tactics, including blogging, content creation, social media campaigns, PPC ads, engagement strategies, and organic search marketing.

Public relations:

We offer a wide variety of reputation management services integrated with your overall marketing strategy. These services include press release writing, product launch advertising, online syndication, and marketing promotions. We can also improve your reputation via thought leadership, content marketing, media relations, and more.

Customer experience:

We develop various strategies to help improve your customer experience. We can help with package design, brand development, contests, promotions, pricing structures, and more.

Digital marketing tactics:

We can plan and execute digital marketing efforts as part of your ongoing marketing strategy. These efforts may include SEO, video production, PPC advertising, social media advertising, mobile and web app implementation, content creation, and more.

Traditional Advertising:

In addition to digital marketing, we can also help develop a traditional advertising campaign integrated with the rest of your marketing efforts. Some of the traditional advertising services we offer include print ad design, radio scripts and audio production, photography, logo development, video production, sales brochures, and more.

Improve Your Long-Term Marketing Using Integrated Marketing Solutions

To create an effective cross-channel marketing campaign, you need integrated marketing solutions. Moreover, integrated marketing is the best way to strengthen your brand, grow your business, and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry over the long term.

Find out more about the integrated marketing solutions we offer by contacting us to request a free marketing consultation at Stevens & Tate today.

8 Important Questions To Ask When Hiring Inbound Marketing Agencies

November 13, 2024/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Inbound marketing is a force to be reckoned with. For businesses, that lack the time or adequate resources to take care of their own inbound marketing, these agencies offer a solution. Inbound marketing agencies work on search engine optimization, social media campaigns, and all-around content marketing. They do all the heavy lifting so that your business can focus on important details.

There are many agencies on the market that can offer you with professional inbound marketing solutions. Selecting the best agency to provide these services can be quite confusing. Below are some of the questions you can use. These questions can help you identify if an inbound agency is right for your business. You can use these questions to determine if an inbound agency aligns with your business direction.

Questions To Ask When Hiring Inbound Marketing Agency

1. Areas of expertise and experience?

Your prospective inbound marketing agency should be able to work with different types of businesses. Take time to understand the scope of their services. Most agencies should be able to handle B2B or B2C solutions with ease.

2. What service packages are available?

When looking for an agency to fill your marketing solution shoes, you need to take wholesome packages into account. These packages usually cover the basics. If you want more specialized solutions, you need to be sure the agency can satisfy your order. The prospective inbound marketing agency should take care of lead generation systems and SEO optimization among other things in the package.

Read More – Benefits of Inbound Marketing

3. What are your performance benchmarks?

For you to understand and analyze the process that the agency will take, you have to understand how their scoring system works. How do they actually measure the performance of their marketing strategies? What scale do they use? Feel free to ask more case study questions or make recommendations so the agency can provide tailor-made solutions.

4. What strategies seem fit for my business and do you have the required resources?

An agency’s influence is tied to its power in resources. Your inbound marketing agency must have the ability to come up with marketing strategies and follow through with them. It is retardant to deal with an agency that always needs your financial backing. Cost should be mentioned upfront.

Read Read: Why Inbound Marketing Solutions Are Integral To Your Success

5. How much time will it take?

Depending on the agency you want to work with, the completion time for projects will vary. Look for those who will work within the time frame you have provided.

6. What is your client retention status?

You can tell a lot from a business and the amount of clients they retain. High retention rates indicate high turnover. You want to work with a business that is trusted and supported with a number of people.

7. How do you integrate your team?

As a business looking for a marketing agency, you want to be sure that everyone involved understands your goal. Work with agencies that are open to taking direction and involving you in major/minor decisions.

8. How is ROI measured?

There are agencies that do not provide these services or only provide these services in limited function. It is better to work with agencies that do detailed ROI measurements. This way you can easily track how your investment is progressing.

With these questions, we are confident you will be able to select the right agency for your company. Look for an agency that gives you a creative edge and allows you to focus on your sales. We wish you all the best!

Five Inbound Marketing Resources Every Marketer Should Know About

November 7, 2024/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

If you’re tuned in to inbound, you’ve surely found some valuable resources on the internet. There are some failsafe, go-to websites out there that can help you hone your marketing skills. They can also help you develop better content, and drive traffic more effectively. Here are some of our favorite top 5 inbound marketing resources:

5 Inbound Marketing Resources

1. HubSpot

Arguably the world’s leader in inbound marketing software, HubSpot has more than changed the game of online marketing. As a matter of fact, they practically wrote, broke, and authored the rules of inbound as we know it.

From HubSpot’s comprehensive blog covering everything from marketing to sales and everything in between to the highly lauded HubSpot Academy, there’s something for every marketer. For instance, HubSpot has an interactive course dedicated to content marketing that can provide you with a big picture view of everything you need for a successful content marketing strategy. Subscribe to their updates, and you’ll have access to free webinars, marketing kits, and endless tools as they evolve.

One of HubSpot’s most valuable tools is it’s Website Grader. Enter your website and email, and the Grader will score your website in four categories: performance, mobile, SEO, and security. Use this as a starting point to improve your site’s visitor experience.

Also Read: Hubspot vs Mailchimp Differences

2. Content Marketing Institute

Great content is the cornerstone to any inbound marketing strategy, and the Content Marketing Institute is a must-visit for any inbound marketer looking to pump out quality work. The CMI has pooled together many industry experts to create a comprehensive white paper and ebook library. These are full of techniques for how to engage readers, keep them connected, and tell better stories.

Read More: 8 Important Questions To Ask When Hiring Inbound Marketing Agencies

3. Moz

Creating excellent content is a great start to establishing expertise in your field and against your competition; however, attracting folks to your page is a whole different idea all together. Moz is the go-to expert for all things SEO. Their endless SEO learning library offers invaluable insights and data. Elevate your SEO game with Moz’s comprehensive resources.

Also Read: The Secret to SEO and 5 Tips on Optimizing Your Results

4. Canva

Canva is a free website which allows you to design visually appealing cover photos, social media posts, and presentations. It is used throughout the industry by some of the biggest names in inbound. Canvas also holds a complete library of how-to’s for all things Canva and design related.

The resources available through Canva can help you generate infographics, Facebook cover photos, posters, and more without guessing what dimensions you should work with. Canva’s pre-sized canvases optimize your content for the end digital user without skewing graphics or pixelating fonts.

Once you’ve published your content, created some stylish Canva graphics, and SEO’d your blog posts, turn to Social Media Examiner for helpful tips on how to get your content in front of your social media followers.

As SEO trends and Google’s algorithms constantly change, social media has updated its algorithms. If you’re doing it alone, you’re taking shots in the dark, but thanks to Social Media Examiner, you can stay ahead of the constantly changing world of social media.

A marketer's guide to advanced automation

5 Benefits Of Marketing Automation

October 29, 2024/in Content Marketing, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

When researching purchases online, customers expect timely responses to their questions. Organizations that are able to respond quickly and provide content that addresses that customer’s specific needs are more successful. A Harvard Business Review study found that companies are 60 times more likely to qualify a lead, if they follow up within one hour.

Marketing automation helps enable organizations to respond to those requests quickly, engage leads with relevant content, track and score each lead’s behavior, and deliver better quality leads. Read more

Why Inbound Marketing Solutions Are Integral To Your Success

October 22, 2024/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Dan Gartlan

Inbound marketing is a strategy that focuses on attracting customers using valuable content instead of traditional advertising methods (such as cold calling). Successful inbound marketing solutions help make your company easier to find online and nurture potential leads through the buyer’s journey. Inbound marketing is incredibly effective because it’s a long-term strategy that allows leads to be nurtured at their own pace.

The Difference Between Inbound Marketing And Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing is a strategy that relies on interrupting potential customers with advertising messages. Outbound methods include cold calling, TV commercials, and direct mail. These tactics are often intrusive and can be easily ignored or blocked by consumers.

Inbound marketing is the exact opposite of outbound marketing. Rather than bombarding potential customers with ads, inbound marketing relies on providing valuable content that draws customers in. Inbound methods include creating blog posts, articles, ebooks, white papers, social media posts, and podcasts. These tactics are designed to help potential customers learn about your company and the solutions you provide.

When it comes down to it, outbound marketing casts a wide net, forcing your message on a large audience in the hopes of reaching potential leads. It’s a strategy that’s short-term in nature. Inbound marketing solutions focus on positioning your business to be found by your target audience on their time. Whereas outbound is considered an “interruption” strategy, inbound is a “permission” strategy that’s more long-term in nature.

The Four Stages of Inbound Marketing

A successful inbound marketing strategy should engage potential leads at every stage of the buyer’s journey. As such, you can separate inbound marketing into four distinct stages:

Stage One: Attract

The first stage is all about attracting potential leads to your brand. This stage requires various tactics to generate brand awareness and make it easy for potential leads to find your website. For this stage to be successful, you need to understand who your target audience is. It’s why many businesses will start by developing their buyer personas first.

Stage Two: Convert

Converting visitors to leads is the next step once you’ve attracted them. The idea behind this stage is to educate visitors and earn their trust using high-quality content. They will then be more willing to sign up to an email list via lead capture forms on your website or blog. Many businesses will use gated content, such as downloadable eBooks or free trials, as incentives for leads to provide their contact information.

Stage Three: Close

Once you capture your leads, you’ll need to nurture them through the sales funnel using personalized content. You can do this by sending them offers and nurturing them via an email marketing campaign.

Stage Four: Delight

The last stage focuses on delighting customers with exceptional customer service. You can do so by using follow-up emails, social media interactions, cross-selling opportunities, and more.

Also Read: What Are Marketing Qualified Leads And Why Do They Matter?

The Essential Inbound Marketing Strategies

There are a few primary inbound marketing solutions that every business should implement. However, it’s essential to understand that these strategies function best if you plan and execute them in conjunction with one another. Your best chance of success is when the following inbound marketing strategies work together.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is crucial to inbound marketing. Without content, you’ll have no way to attract potential leads or nurture them. You’ll want to create content that addresses every stage of the buyer’s journey, from awareness to advocacy.

High-quality content that addresses the needs of your target audience is likely to be shared more and to rank higher on Google’s search engine. As a result, it will make it easier to be found by prospects in the awareness stage. Additionally, by creating informative and educational content, you’ll engage your leads and build trust, which will make it easier to convert them.

You can implement many inbound marketing solutions in your content marketing strategy. For example, you can blog and create downloadable content offers to encourage email sign-ups and email marketing.

There are 4.62 billion people using social media as of this year. As such, social media marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience and engage with your leads. By creating pages on the social channels (such as Facebook or Twitter) your audience uses, you set up another platform to help spread awareness of your brand. After all, you can post content that can be shared and drive users back to your website.

The ability to engage directly with prospects also functions as a PR strategy. As such, your social media presence can help increase your brand reputation, building trust with your audience as a result. The following are a few examples of social media inbound marketing solutions you can use:

Addressing negative comments: If a prospect has a negative experience with your product or service, addressing them on social media can help resolve the situation and improve customer loyalty.
Keeping followers engaged: Asking questions, providing valuable content, and running contests and giveaways are all great ways to keep followers engaged.
Posting website content: Simply posting new content published on your blog can help drive traffic from your social media pages to your website.
Building relationships with influencers: Social media influencers have huge followings on social media. By identifying influencers in your industry and building relationships with them, you could boost awareness of your brand (especially if they share your content with their audiences).
Live streaming: Many social channels allow live streaming, which can be a great way to connect with your audience in real-time. You can live stream all types of video content, including product launches, interviews with team members, and behind-the-scenes footage.

Also Read: The Top 10 Strategies for Mastering Inbound Marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the process of optimizing your website and content so that it appears as the top result for relevant keywords in search engines. When people use Google, Bing, or other search engines to find information, products, or services, you want your website to be one of the first results they see.

SEO is an ongoing process that requires continual effort. You’ll need to research the right keywords, optimize your website using those keywords, and track your results. However, keyword usage isn’t the only SEO tactic in the book. Google takes great care to rank pages based on the quality of the content, which means that your content has to provide value.

Secondly, Google determines content quality using engagement metrics, which includes:

External backlinks you’ve earned from high-quality websites
Social engagement, such as shares and likes
Number of visits
Page load speeds
Mobile-friendliness

As such, ranking well on search engine results pages (SERP) requires a comprehensive and robust SEO strategy.

Also Read: The Importance of Earning High Quality Backlinks

Inbound Marketing is Critical to Your Success

Inbound marketing combines all the tactics previously discussed: SEO, social media marketing, and content marketing. It’s the process of attracting leads to your website through the use of relevant and helpful content. When properly implemented, inbound marketing solutions can be extremely effective in generating leads and converting customers over the long term.

How a Strong Public Relations (PR) Strategy Can Benefit Your Inbound Marketing Efforts

October 16, 2024/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Public Relations /by Dan Gartlan

Inbound marketing focuses heavily on increasing brand awareness and building brand trust. As such, people sometimes confuse inbound marketing strategies with public relations (PR) strategies. After all, public relations is about maintaining the integrity of your brand. However, they are actually different from one another — although they do depend heavily on each other for success. The following is a breakdown of the differences between inbound marketing and PR and how they can work together.

The Difference Between Inbound Marketing And Public Relations

Inbound marketing is a multi-faceted strategy that consists of a range of tactics for promoting products and services as well as for educating consumers. The ultimate goal of inbound marketing is to attract and convert more leads in order to generate more customers. The goal of PR isn’t to generate and convert leads and customers. The goal of PR is to maintain and improve the public perception of your brand. Basically, a good PR strategy will help you build a favorable reputation. Unlike inbound, PR focuses as much on targeting shareholders and employees as it does on potential and existing consumers or clients.

Also Read: Your Brand Reputation and Public Relations

How Good PR Can Benefit Your Inbound Marketing Campaign

Trust is vital to your ability to convert new leads. The more brand trust you generate, the easier it becomes to close new sales. As such, a good PR strategy can supplement your inbound strategy. When it comes to PR, it’s not just about putting out good publicity and improving your brand reputation — it’s also about preventing a bad reputation.

PR requires that you get on top of situations that can damage your rep. For instance, if customers are leaving bad feedback on your social media pages, you can’t just ignore it or it will hurt your public perception. As part of a successful PR strategy, you would address poor feedback. Show that your brand cares about the experience of its customers. In fact, if you handle such feedback effectively, you could even turn it into a win that actually boosts your brand trust.

PR also includes publishing notices about new products and services, or about upcoming events. These announcements double as promotional content for your business. This can pique the interest of your target audience, thereby bolstering your inbound marketing capabilities.

Public Relations (PR) Strategies That Can Boost Your Inbound Marketing Success

The following are a few of the public relations (PR) strategies that can go a long way towards improving your inbound marketing efforts:

Publish high-quality content – PR is a form of content creation. As such, you’ll want to make sure that whenever you release a press release. Make sure it is well written, properly optimized, and targeting a specific audience. Your PR content can double as inbound content, after all.
Focus on executives – Putting a face on your brand can help improve brand trust. As such, use your executives for interviews and quotes when releasing new PR content. Doing so can also help establish the people behind your brand as thought leaders, thereby increasing brand authority.
Promote award wins – When your company or the people in your company win industry awards, be sure to announce those wins. Such content will showcase your company’s expertise, which will improve your reputation as well as your authority and trust.
Publish press releases – Your press releases can help drive new leads to your inbound marketing or sales assets (as long as those press releases are of high quality).

Implement A PR Strategy As A Part Of Your Inbound Marketing Efforts Today

A good PR strategy can help you control the public perception of your brand, thereby ensuring that you maintain a good reputation. Such a reputation is vital to building brand trust and, as such, can help to bolster your inbound marketing efforts.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers

The Benefits of Inbound Marketing

September 21, 2024/in Articles, Content Marketing, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Inbound Marketing is all about empowering potential customers. It provides a shift in marketing tactics that can make a real difference in how consumers react to a company. Inbound strives to create marketing that people will love. The goal of inbound marketing is to give consumers content that will be helpful to them, rather than simply giving them a sales pitch. The following are some inbound marketing benefits.

Benefits of Inbound Marketing

Long Lasting Relationships
The Buyer’s Journey
Brand Credibility

3 Ways To Enhance Your Landing Pages

September 7, 2024/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Landing pages are a great way to provide website visitors with helpful content, collect important customer information, and begin to build a relationship. They can be a great tool for generating leads for your business. But in order to convert visitors into leads, you must offer them something of value, and do so in a way that is easily navigable.

How To Improving Landing Page Performance

Here are a few easy ways to enhance your landing page performance.

Viewers should have a quick and clear understanding of the offer

People have very short attention spans, so in order to keep them on your landing page, it needs to be easily digestible within the first few seconds of viewing. Your message to your website visitors should be as clear and concise as possible. The headline should tell your visitors exactly what it is that you want them to do, and how to do it.

Using visuals to help communicate your offer can be helpful as well. Images should correlate well with the content offer, so viewers can quickly understand what it is they are accessing. For example, if you are offering an ebook, create a picture of the ebook or upload the ebook cover photo to the landing page. Good, descriptive images will make your offer more reliable, and will ultimately help convert more of your visitors into leads.

Also consider the value of your offer in what information you decide to collect. The higher the value, the more willing your visitors will be to provide information to you. This can help your company better understand your target audience.

Eliminate distractions on the page

People tend to be easily distracted, so you’ll want to make sure that there is nothing on your landing page that will deter them from providing their information and downloading your offer. It is important to remove the navigation bars and links from landing pages. While those are necessary on the home page, they can be detrimental to the success of your landing pages. At this point in the conversion process, you don’t want your visitors clicking back to a different part of your website and ignoring your offer.

Your landing page should have a strong focal point in order to enhance the clarity of the offer. Perhaps the focal point is your CTA that tells your visitors to download a white paper. Make sure that submit button attracts attention and is easy to click on.

Read More: 3 Helpful Tips To Improve Your CTAs To Generate More Leads

Perhaps the only place you want your visitors to be able to navigate to from your landing page are your social media sites. Include social sharing icons so that your viewers can not only follow your social media accounts, but also so that they can share this offer to their own followers. Continuing your relationship with your visitors on social media is helpful to both your company and to them.

The success of your landing page performance depends on if they are formatted in a way that makes it simple for your visitors to digest and retrieve your offer. These tips will help convert your website visitors into leads, and further your Inbound Marketing efforts.

Are your landing pages ready to go? If so, find out how to continue guiding your leads through the Buyer’s Journey.

Effective Inbound Marketing Strategies

August 20, 2024/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Successful inbound marketing depends on your ability to engage your leads and to nurture them through their buyer’s journeys. However, you’re going to have to attract leads first. Because technology keeps evolving and the way that people use the Internet keeps changing, it’s vital that you continuously update your inbound marketing strategies so that you can continue to attract high-quality leads.

Top Inbound Marketing Strategies

With that in mind, the following are a few inbound marketing strategies you should consider implementing this year:

1. Focus On Optimizing Your Content For Featured Snippets

Although you can still attract a lot of high-quality leads by ranking first through third on Google’s SERP, it’s no longer the first thing that users see. Instead, the first thing that appears on Google’s SERP is their featured snippets. Websites listed in featured snippets tend to get a boost in organic traffic since searches often click on the website links listed on the snippets.

Learn More about Google’s SERPs

2. Develop Relationships With Micro-Influencers

Social media influencers have massive followings. This means that if they highlight your brand on their channels, it could significantly increase your company’s exposure. However, such social media influencers tend to have broad audiences, which means many of their followers may not fall within your target audience. On top of that, it can be difficult for a small to a mid-sized company to get the attention of such an influencer, much less to convince them to promote your business.

Instead, you should consider finding micro-influencers. These are influencers with smaller audiences that focus on more niche subjects. You’ll have a better chance of building a relationship with a micro-influencer — and their audience will probably have greater overlap with your target audience as well.

3. Create Short Video Content

Although long-form video content is certainly effective, it tends to work better as an engagement tool rather than an attraction tool. Short-form video content does really well on social media especially. People are more likely to watch through the entire video and share it with others on their social channels if it’s on the shorter side. Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok also focus on short video content, and those sites have skyrocketed in popularity over the years.

4. Consider Using Progressive Forms

Potential leads are often discouraged from converting through opt-in forms if there are too many questions. If they feel like the offer isn’t worth the information they have to give up, they’ll just leave your site without converting. You can solve this issue by using progressive forms. Progressive forms require that leads fill out a new form every time they download a new resource instead of asking for one form to be filled out upfront. The advantage of doing this is that you can just ask for a couple of details each time so that it doesn’t feel like they’re providing that much information to you.

5. Optimize For Voice Search

Voice assistants, such as Siri and Alexa, have drastically increased the number of voice searches performed over the past few years. While text-based searches are still the most popular way to perform a search online, voice searches continue to increase. In 2019, a third of the U.S. population used voice search. As such, you may want to begin optimizing for voice search. You can do this by adding a voice search snippet to your blog posts. You can also begin writing content in a more direct and conversational way.

6. Optimize Your Website For Mobile Use

There are now billions of smartphone users in the world today. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile use, it’s going to hurt your search rankings. Additionally, mobile users who do stumble onto your site are going to have all kinds of trouble navigating it. This is because a site not optimized for mobile use won’t display correctly on smaller screen sizes.

7. Adjust Your Content Strategy Around The Use Of Clusters

Topic clusters are a more organized way to create content. Essentially, you create a pillar page on a certain topic, then create separate pages (such as blog posts) that cover related subtopics. These pages are then all linked to your pillar page, creating a cluster of content. The reason this is so effective is that it leads to a higher number of internal links. As such, visitors have an easier time navigating through relevant content, while search engines have an easier time identifying context, which can lead to boosted rankings and more organic traffic.

Finding new ways to attract your target audience is critical to your inbound marketing efforts. Because people change the ways that they use the web as they adapt to new technology, it’s important that you continually revisit your inbound strategies. As such, consider implementing some of these inbound marketing strategies to attract new leads in 2021.

Inbound VS Outbound Marketing: What’s Better for You?

August 9, 2024/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Outbound Marketing /by Dan Gartlan

Your marketing strategy is not something that you should take lightly. After all, the success of your business, whether it’s big or small, is going to depend on your ability to generate customers. Without effective marketing, it’s going to be very difficult to grow your audience, not to mention your customer base. However, if you do just a little bit of research, you’ll quickly find that there are two main types of marketing: inbound marketing and outbound marketing. The question is, which should you use for your business?

Inbound VS Outbound Marketing

What Is Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing is the more traditional form of marketing. The main strategy of an outbound marketing campaign is to get your company’s message to an audience that consists of potential customers. For instance, running commercials on TV or radio, placing ads in magazines or newspapers, or putting up billboards outside. These are all forms of outbound marketing. The idea is that people who need your product or service are, hopefully, exposed to your ads and will come to you as a result.

Benefits Of Outbound Marketing

Reach potential customers who were not aware of your brand
Successful outbound marketing can boost short-term sales

Drawbacks Of Outbound Marketing

Most outbound marketing tactics are expensive
Targeting a broader audience will usually result in a lower ROI
May reach potential customers who aren’t ready to buy
Forcing message onto the audience, which can put them off

What Is Inbound Marketing?

Whereas outbound marketing involves forcing a message to an audience, inbound marketing focuses on putting your business in the position to be found by your audience on their own time. Most inbound marketing efforts are digital. For example, setting up a website and a social presence, writing content aimed at your target audience, and optimizing your content for SEO (search engine optimization). The idea is to make your brand easy for potential customers to find or stumble upon when searching for relevant information online. Once found, you can then nurture them through the sales funnel at their own convenience.

Read More: Why Your Website Redesign Would Benefit From An Inbound Marketing Strategy

Benefits Of Inbound Marketing

Higher ROI. Your marketing efforts live forever (unlike outbound marketing), which means they can continue to see results in the future.
You can reach more people. Billions of people use the Internet, giving you potential access to a much greater audience.
Inbound marketing allows you to target specific buyer personas with greater ease, leading to better results.
Inbound marketing is much more affordable.

Drawbacks Of Inbound Marketing

You won’t see overnight results. Inbound marketing requires a lot of long-term effort.

What Type Of Marketing Should You Choose?

Inbound VS Outbound Marketing are different from each other but you should choose one as per your business requirement. Which type of marketing better suits your business is going to depend on various factors, such as what your budget is and what your goals are (are the more short-term or long-term?). However, as a smaller to mid-sized business, inbound marketing is going to be your best bet. It’s much more affordable and allows you to steadily grow your business over the long term. But that doesn’t mean that you should ignore outbound marketing. Outbound can still be incredibly effective, despite the fact that some mistakenly think that it has become obsolete with the advent of inbound.

Outbound marketing tactics can still be incredibly useful. There’s a reason why businesses still run large ad campaigns in magazines or on TV. There’s a reason why it’s so expensive to run a commercial in a 30-second slot during the Super Bowl. That reason is that outbound marketing still works. It’s a great way to increase brand exposure if you know what you’re doing.

Even if you don’t have a massive budget to work with, outbound marketing can still be effective, especially if used in conjunction with your inbound marketing strategy. After all, you can use outbound to market your online presence. For example, you can put your website or social media handles up at the end of your commercials, on your print ads, or on your billboards. You can even put QR codes on your print ads that people can scan with their smartphones.

The primary reason why advertising your inbound efforts on your outbound efforts is so effective is that most people are using a smartphone, tablet, or laptop while they are watching TV — or have one on hand when they pass by a billboard or are flipping through a magazine.

Build A Marketing Strategy Using Both Inbound And Outbound Strategies

There’s no reason to choose just one. Both inbound marketing and outbound marketing strategies have their pros and cons. Inbound tends to be a more long-term strategy, while outbound is more short-term. As such, using them together allows you to run a more comprehensive omni-channel marketing strategy. The more complete your marketing efforts are, the greater the odds of success will be.