If your new to inbound marketing you’re likely overwhelmed with advice. Rest assured that inbound takes time, usually involves some mistakes and at the end of day is about way more than jazzy tools.
If you’re just getting going try to remember these 4 fundamentals of compelling inbound marketing:
1. Create engaging content
Marketing to today’s consumers is all about engaging them with content that captures their attention. Instead of interrupting people, content should pull them in. When you create your own compelling content, you get a permanent asset that lives forever and can help many different people. The bonus: often the cost of acquiring a customer via inbound is lower than traditional methods.
2. Give context to your content
In case of inbound marketing, context is the right content at the right time on the right channel. If the context of your message is missing, the content is not going to be read, shared or discussed.
Over time, as your inbound marketing program becomes more sophisticated, you’ll be able to tailor content on your website to specific buyers’ preferences and previous behaviours via tools like smart calls to action and landing pages.
3. Go beyond marketing automation
Marketing automation is great. It should be part of your lead nurturing process and email marketing initiatives. Still, you have to do more. It’s important to look at real time activity and get involved with customers on a one to one basis in channels like social media. Just because great tools for automating various processes exist does not mean you can go to sleep and ignore the wider world.
4. Social media is a critical part of inbound
Let’s be clear. inbound marketing requires that you have a social media presence. Different social networks may be more ideal for you. But regardless of whether you choose Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any of the other numerous social networks out there, done right, they all help increase your exposure. Social also offers you the chance to listen to conversations, make adjustments based on the intelligence gained and engage directly with your audience.
Hopefully this short post will help keep it simple.
