Have you taken the time to prioritize your inbound marketing strategies for 2019 yet? As marketers ourselves, we know it can be overwhelming due to the sheer number of tactics you can use.
To help make it less overwhelming, we’ve narrowed it down to seven strategies that we think will bring the most value to your inbound marketing this year. Continue reading to see our suggestions.
1. SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the process of optimizing your website’s content and structure to receive organic or “free” placements on search engine results. Without strong SEO, your potential customers cannot find your business.
So, what elements of SEO should you incorporate into your strategy? For 2019, voice search, internal links, and link building should be high on your list.
Internal links
Internal links are links placed throughout your website’s content that send your visitors to another page of your site. They connect your content and give Google a sense of your website’s structure. Adding internal links helps Google understand the relevance of your pages, the value of certain pages, and the relationship between your webpages. To rank higher, hyperlink your keyword phrases within your content. Moz.com has several free tools to help you with your internal linking strategy.
Link Building
After creating your internal link strategy, focus on link building. Link building involves getting other websites to link back to your website or blog. Backlinks help drive referral traffic and increase your site authority because they signal to Google your website is worthy of third-party citation. Sites with more backlinks rank higher because of this. To attract more backlinks, make sure your content is high-quality, and tell people about it. Ask your network or partners to link back to your site.
Voice Search
Another element of SEO you should not ignore in 2019 is voice search. An impressive 72% of people who own voice-activated devices use them daily. By 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice searches. For voice search optimization, the focus should be on forming questions, rather than long-tail keywords. Tools such as Answer the Public can help you get an idea of what questions your potential customers have.
Also read: SEO 101: What is It and How to Do It
2. Content Marketing
Content marketing involves creating and sharing educational and enjoyable content about your products and services to your prospects. You can deliver your content in a variety of ways, such as blogs, eBooks, and videos.
To make your content more valuable, it should address specific pain points of your target audiences at every stage of their buyer’s journey. This includes awareness, consideration, and decision-related content.
Potential customers recognize they have a problem and need a solution during the awareness stage. Awareness content should provide high-level educational content that reflects this. At the consideration stage, they are exploring options to resolve their problems. Your content should highlight your solution, addressing their specific needs with hard facts. And lastly, when they reach the decision stage they’ve decided on their solution strategy. Your content here should be brand specific, and show why they should buy your product or service.
To ensure you’re creating content that reflects each of the above stages, and speaks to your buyers’ pain points, create an editorial calendar to track it. With an editorial calendar, you can track what type of content you’re creating, for what buyer, at what stage, and through what medium.
Also read: Inbound Content Strategy: Overcoming the Saturation Problem
3. Personalization
Through the help of HubSpot, you can personalize your inbound marketing strategies across all your content. Personalization includes adding a person’s name, company, or additional relevant information to the content they’re receiving. People like being addressed directly by brands, because it makes their digital communication appear more human, based on research done by Liveclicker.
Don’t believe it? According to MarketingProfs, web personalization increases your sales by 19%. Personalizing your marketing emails results in a 29% higher open rate, and 41% higher click-through rate.
4. Social Media
Social media is another component of a good inbound marketing strategy. Social media provides a quick, and easy way to promote your content. With 77% of Americans using social media, there’s a strong chance people will see your content.
It’s also a great place to engage, interact, and learn more about your audience. Social media builds trust with your audience through engagement. Social media engagement and interaction increases your customers’ trust in your brand, according to Jay Baer. Social media analytics tools can also provide demographic, geographic, and content-related insights to better target your audience as well.
Your social channels can also help you generate content ideas through social listening. This involves reading conversations across your platforms to understand what your consumers are saying your industry. Third party tools can help get with social listening and more.
5. Chatbots
Chatbots are computer programs that automate certain tasks by chatting with a customer or potential customer through a conversational interface. They lighten your teams’ workloads by tackling simple conversational tasks. They delight users because more and more people want information as quickly as possible.
The most advanced chatbots understand complex requests, personalize response, and improve interactions over time by gathering information. Some chatbot services like HubSpot’s store this information allowing your team to learn about your potential customers by reviewing their full conversations with your bot.
If you don't have the time to reference all the information your chatbot collects, you can configure your bots to help you qualify leads, book meetings, and alert your sales team when a contact is fully qualified.
Also read: Leveraging Bots and Live Chat on HubSpot for Customer Success
6. Landing Pages
Landing pages provide your marketing team with a direct way to collect information, like names and emails, making them a necessary part of your strategy.
You can use landing pages for a multitude of offers, such as premium downloadable content, free trials, or demos. When creating them, be sure to insert a relevant call-to-action and form on all your landing pages. If your landing page targets your audience well, you’re more likely to convert them.
7. Email
Another crucial moving part of any inbound strategy is email. This means sending campaigns with appropriate content to people who have provided you with their email address.
Examples of good campaigns to consider are newsletters, webinars, nurture campaigns, new product launches, and reminders. When used strategically, your emails can reflect the stages of a contact’s buyer’s journey and warm them up for your sales team.
Now that we’ve highlighted the strategies we feel will impact your inbound marketing the most, it’s time for you to begin implementing! From SEO to email, you’re bound to see success. If you feel like you need further help with your inbound marketing strategy, reach out to us today.
