2022 is a year that so far, is heavily affected by the pandemic. The introduction of the metaverse is a signifier that customers are interacting with brands in entirely new ways.
Marketers are doing all they can to keep up, and fortunately, there are tried and true methods that are still bringing success.
Lockdowns and immobility had a tremendous impact on customer buying habits. Traditional broadcasting and advertisements do not hold the same weight. For the majority of businesses, Outbound Marketing strategies have become obsolete and are now being replaced by Inbound Marketing.
Source: saffronedge
Compared to outbound marketing, based on putting yourself out there, inbound marketing believes in drawing people in. The Alaniz team has compiled five inbound marketing strategies that will ensure great results for your brand or company. So, be sure to share as a resource to your network.
Five Inbound Marketing Strategies to use in 2022
According to HubSpot, inbound marketing consists of three stages: attract, engage, and delight. These strategies will provide you with a plan on how to incorporate these principles into effect.
Create a target audience
The first step to inbound marketing is understanding your prospective customers. Remember, you are attracting them towards you, so you must know what they are looking for and provide them with the same. Creating customer personas will help you develop tactics that attract customers.
Here’s how you can create accurate customer personas
- Define your customer personas: Creating customer personas will require you to do thorough audience research. The rewards are better messaging, timing, and ultimately more sales.
- Test & refine your personas: You can do this by sending specific email messaging to seperate audience groups. For this to work you must segment your customers. Segmentation can be based on location, buying history, gender, or even age.
- Incorporate personas into existing marketing efforts: Brief your marketing and sales department of the various customer personas. When marketing & sales have a better understanding of the variety of customers they serve, they can better connect with customers.
The data you collect from these follow-ups will give you a better idea about the most prospective consumer base you have and what type of content they expect from you. This reduces the cost of marketing while boosting effectiveness.
According to CMO, target marketing is two times more effective than mass marketing and generates a higher ROI. Target marketing will serve you by being more cost-effective while getting more results through targeted inbound marketing.
Produce incredible content
The content was, is, and always will be the king. If we consider HubSpot’s marketing funnel, we will find the content in every phase. So, you need the best quality content that resonates with the interest of your audience.
Generic and promotional content is hardly impactful.
You have to create exciting and informative content that potential customers find valuable. You might be surprised to learn that as much as 69% of best-in-class marketers align their content with their sales and marketing funnel.
Here are some tips for content creation:
- Make sure your headline is appealing and engaging
- Include visual content like images and explainer videos
- Focus on thought-provoking, data-driven content
Remember, 77% of people read blogs regularly, and 67% of bloggers who post daily say they are successful. Thus, you must focus on your content when implementing inbound marketing.
Start guest posting
Guest posting is the best inbound marketing strategy that you can put into use, and data supports this:
- 62.96% of readers perceive blogs with multiple authors to be more credible
- 60% of blogs write 1-5 guest posts per month
Besides that, guest posting also helps you secure backlinks, create authority in space, and build relationships with influencers.
You can utilize guest posting in the following ways:
- Make consistent guest contributions
- Only publish blogs with engaged readers
Disclaimer: Guest posts may need some tweaks on your end. Before posting the blogs, make sure you check for the blog’s relevancy, quality, and engagement. You can also try posting your blogs on authoritative websites to boost your search engine ranking.
Maximize your results from SEO
SEO is one of the most dominant aspects of inbound marketing, and 61% of marketers believe that SEO is the key to online success. Smaller businesses fear not, there are free SEO strategies that require little skill to implement.
For a successful SEO plan, relevant content is necessary. Think quality over quantity. Creating content takes time, so start by researching topics based on your personas. From there, it’s optimizing that content for SEO.
These are some tips on how to use SEO effectively:
- Optimize each landing page for a specific keyword
- Summarize each page using keywords in the meta description
- Promote what you write on social media to generate backlinks
Source: ahrefs
It’s impossible to specify the exact number of backlinks that would put you on the search rankings. However, the factors impacting it are keywords, competing sites that are ranking now, and your content topic.
Build effective email campaigns
Inbound email marketing can rev up sales, generate traffic to your website, and increase leads. Email marketing’s ROI is substantial, generating a $44.25 return on every dollar invested. Not only that, 66% of consumers claim to have made a purchase online due to email marketing.
Try these tactics for email marketing:
- Send helpful content to subscribers
- Send follow-up emails
- Provide exclusive sales to your dedicated subscribers
Email marketing is budget-friendly and effective. In many cases, it is successful in bringing back leads that were once lost. With patience and an investment of your time, subscribers will further engage with your business.
Bonus
Here are two bonus strategies that you can use to boost your inbound marketing results:
Try an influencer marketing campaign: They work as a form of authoritative third-party endorsements. People believe influencers and are more likely to be convinced by their feedback on a product.
Optimize your website’s design and copy for conversions: the ultimate goal of inbound marketing is to drive traffic to your website. Once they arrive, the website’s responsibility is to convert them. So, make sure your website is equipped to convert visitors into leads.
Conclusion
Once you understand the concept of inbound marketing, you will realize that it is not about hammering an idea into your audiences’ minds. It is about giving them enough information and, more importantly, a reason to associate with you.
To draw people in, you have to offer them something they can’t refuse. Refer to the five strategies above for your company’s 2022 inbound strategy and watch customers begin to gravitate naturally towards your business.
Prefer reading: How to Choose an Inbound Marketing Agency for IT Businesses