Today’s consumers are constantly searching for information on the products or services they want. This is why a well-executed inbound marketing campaign can be hugely helpful in increasing sales.
Inbound marketing involves attracting the attention of potential customers by appealing to their needs and sparking interest in your offering. Instead of interrupting them with an intrusive ad, you create value that draws them in and invites them to take the first step with your business.
Want to get started with inbound marketing? Below are some examples of real inbound marketing campaigns that worked well for small businesses.
[Read: 6 Low-Cost Marketing Ideas for Growing Businesses]
YouTube videos
The Slumber Yard creates helpful YouTube videos for its core demographic. COO Matthew Ross said these videos have allowed the company to rank on the first page of search results organically instead of buying ads.
“We've been able to get in front of potential customers that are searching for related services or products for a very low cost,” Ross said. “Last year, our in-house video content attracted over 2 million views and drove a significant amount of relevant traffic to our website for a fraction of what other marketing strategies would have cost.”
Interactive email sign-up
Many businesses experience high ROI with email marketing, but the first step is getting people to sign up. Keeon Yazdani, CMO of WE R CBD, explained that a clever interactive element on the company’s website has driven its email marketing success.
“Once visitors land on our website, they are prompted to subscribe to our email list in exchange for spinning an interactive wheel and landing on either a 5% or 10% discount code,” said Yazdani. “Since we've implemented this strategy, our email list has grown by 5,000 subscribers in three months.”
You need to know what you want to achieve before you get started, then you have to determine who your audience is for that goal.
Tonya Davis, marketing manager, ThoughtLab
Content creation
Content marketing is one of the most popular inbound marketing strategies among modern brands, and it’s not hard to see why. As Tonya Davis, marketing manager at ThoughtLab, puts it, “Content has a wonderful impact on creating brand authority, site authority and increasing sales.”
Whether they’re creating blogs, videos, infographics, or podcasts, the ThoughtLab team starts with setting a goal.
“You need to know what you want to achieve before you get started, then you have to determine who your audience is for that goal,” Davis explained. “[Then] you can figure out what tone to use that will best resonate with your audience, as well as what type of content to create based on what your audience searches for.”
[Read: What Is Content Marketing?]
Search engine optimization
Capitol Tech Solutions has run many successful inbound marketing campaigns for clients focused around SEO.
“When we get a new client, we take a baseline of where they are,” said CEO Bobby Reed. “That includes current organic website traffic, current web leads … and current ranking on Google. Improvement comes from constantly tweaking the website and content to outrank competitors.”
Social media
Brandon Amoroso, CEO and founder of ElectrIQ Marketing, said his company recently drove traffic and sales through a successful social media campaign for their client, Vertagear.
ElectrIQ focused on organically increasing engagement, driving website traffic, building loyalty, generating buzz and curating a community. Their strategy involved developing strong creative content that aligned with the brand and posting it daily across all social channels. The result? A 35% increase in total transactions and a 24% boost in revenue from social traffic.
[Read: A Complete Guide to Content Marketing]
End-to-end sales enablement content
At marketing agency SmartBug Media, crafting purposeful content around sales enablement is a critical part of all internal and client campaigns.
“We conduct a formal marketing-to-sales handoff to set the sales team up to use new pillar pages, interactive calculators, worksheets and templates, and e-books in the sales process,” said Jennifer Shore, director of marketing and demand generation. “When the sales team knows why the content was created and what problems marketing set goals to solve, it can better integrate that content into actively helping prospects.”
Any of the above inbound marketing strategies can increase traffic and sales for your business. However, like all marketing efforts, it’s important to choose the tactics that are best suited to your business and its customers.
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