What Inbound Marketing is and How to Use It to Grow Your Online Business

It`s easier to convert when you promote your business to a targeted, interested audience than marketing it to anybody.

Inbound marketing is the most effective way to help you target relevant audiences with a higher potential to make purchases.

It helps in tailoring content that answers an audience`s intent, which builds reliability and attracts more clients.

But what is inbound marketing, and how can you apply it to your business? That`s what this content covers.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing refers to attracting clients to your business by creating content that resonates with them and helps them solve their problems.

Importance of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing targets an audience that aligns with your business, enabling you to reach people likely to convert.

Moreover, it is an affordable marketing method since it enables you to target a specific marketing method that matches your audience. If your audience likes videos, you won`t have to spend money on any other method. You can concentrate on that and drive sales.

Inbound Marketing Methodology

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To build long-term relationships with clients through inbound marketing, you must solve your clients` intent and entice them to buy your products or services.

That requires following specific methodologies, which are attracting, engaging, and delighting people in your business. That`s how you can persuade them to consume your content and perform your calls to action.

Here is how you can conduct the inbound marketing methodologies and achieve success in your business.

Attract

This implies creating valuable content to draw people, build trust, and make them regard your business as reliable.

You can attract people by creating informational content such as product guides and case studies to teach people particular skills.

Genuine customer testimonials that show people how your business helped others solve the same problems they are struggling with can also attract clients.

You can also provide discounts and promotions in your content. This creates a sense of urgency in clients to buy your products or services before the offers last.

Besides, when you create content, ensure to optimize it for SEO. This involves using keywords aligning with your business so search engines can match relevant search queries with it.

This helps increase your rank,  and if a website ranks, people regard it as authoritative and hence attracted to it.

Engage

This involves providing helpful content that solves people`s pain points to increase their trust and encourage them to buy from you.

To make your content helpful, provide products or services that solve your client's challenges and make them feel that they are paying to solve their problems and give you profits.

This makes people invest in your business and rely on you as a problem-solver.

To know your audience's pain points, do competitor research. This involves checking your audience`s complaints about their products or services on your competitors` websites and social media platforms.

Moreover, you can conduct interviews and surveys and ask your audience what makes them disinterested or happy about your business.

Based on the outcome, improve your products or services and create content that satisfies your audience.

Delight

This implies helping and supporting your clients to enable them to achieve their goals.

Delight strategy ensures clients are happy and satisfied.

To achieve this, ask for clients` feedback and conduct surveys to collect reviews to help improve your business.

Customers can also interact with you on social media and provide their reviews and questions. If somebody raises concerns about your business, address them and let them know you care about them. This is one of the best ways to strengthen relationships with clients and entice them to perform your calls to action.

Providing support encourages people to keep buying from you, and when they are happy, they`ll recommend you to others. This boosts brand awareness and increases customers.

Methods of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is divided into three main methods:

• SEO Marketing
• PPC Marketing
• Content Marketing

SEO Marketing

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Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the practice taken to enable a website to rank in the top results of organic search engine results.

This involves ensuring that search engines can crawl a website, index content, and match it with relevant searches.

To succeed in SEO, create content relevant to people`s searches, which entails using relevant keywords and adding optimized links to your content.

Conduct Keyword Research

You can align your content with people's searches by incorporating the keywords people use when searching for content related to yours.

That involves conducting keyword research, which entails brainstorming the words people use when searching for products or services related to yours. For instance, if you sell shoes, you can type the keyword sports shoes for sale and search for them on the internet.

Then, check the relevant content ranking for that keyword and see how they incorporated it in the content and take insights.

Besides, you can check the related searches or people also ask sections of the search results and see what people type when searching for relevant products.

Take the results and put them in the keyword research tools to see how much traffic they get monthly. That will help you use keywords with the potential to drive sales.

Then create helpful content including the focus keyword so search engines can understand and match it with the relevant search results.

Follow this resource to learn more about how to conduct keyword research and draw quality traffic to your website.

Add Links to Your Content

Links enable search engines to crawl and index content through different sources and align it with relevant search results. People also find related content through the links, which increases traffic and boosts a website's rank.

Therefore, add internal and external links to your content.

Internal links enable search engines to crawl your website content through different web pages on a website. It also makes your site navigable, allowing people to easily find related content.

Here is a more in-depth resource about how to add internal links and increase your website dwell time.

Moreover, add external links to back up your content and enable people to confirm your views.

However, interlink relevant resources that have much traffic to avail your content to many people and increase the chances of driving traffic.

That builds authority and trust hence increasing the potential to make sales.

Learn how to conduct on-page SEO and increase traffic to your website here.

PPC Marketing

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Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing involves paying search engines to display your adverts on the search results' top pages.

As a marketer, you bid for keywords aligning with your ad campaigns so search engines can match it with the targeted audience.

You can bid for impressions, clicks, ad-views on videos, or conversions.

PPC marketing campaigns are categorized into

Search Advertising

This enables ads to be displayed on the search results.

When somebody searches for something related to your ad campaign, your ad will be displayed on the top results.

Display Advertising

This type of advertising enables ads to be displayed on third-party websites related to the ad`s intent.

They convince the websites` readers to perform the ads' calls to action.

Social Media Advertising

This helps place ads on social media platforms.

You can display social media ads in the news feeds, stories, or messenger targeting an audience relevant to your campaign.

Remarketing

This entails re-advertising to people who have already engaged with your ads but did not complete the call to action.

People who interact with ads but don`t take action have a possibility of being clients. Tracking them and creating new campaigns to retarget and convince them to buy increases the chances of making conversions.

Google Shopping

This method is mainly for e-commerce websites. It displays descriptive results for products or services. This gives the audience detailed information so they can make wise decisions before they click the ads.

Google Shopping displays the business` location, contacts, and working hours.

Now that you know different marketing campaigns, let`s see how you can create ads that entice people to take action.

How to Create Ads Campaigns

No matter the type of ads you choose, you can be successful if your campaigns align with your goals.

Therefore, you first need to know what you want to achieve, which can be

• Increasing sales
• Increasing brand awareness
• Increasing website traffic

To get effective results, focus on achieving a single goal per ad campaign. Targeting multiple goals in one campaign will make your campaign lose focus and rank on irrelevant keywords that can`t convert.

If you want to achieve multiple goals, create different ad groups for each goal.

Besides, be sure to identify your target audience and use copy that can entice them to perform your calls to action. That`s possible by doing competitor research to know the people who convert more in your competitors` businesses.

To do competitor research, search for businesses relevant to your niche, and examine who their clients are. This will enable you to know the audience demographics to focus on.

To find your competitors, type keywords related to your products or services and search. You will see the websites of businesses that rank. Open them and see what people say about their products on their blogs and social media platforms.

Based on the clients` reviews and comments, you will see what audience converts, learn their needs, and create ads that solve their pain points.

Then choose your ad campaign type to determine where your ads should show, whether, display, search, retargeting ads, etc.

However, ensure to use keywords that can enable your ad to rank and attract clients. That`s possible through doing keyword research to know what people type when searching for relevant content.

For instance, if you sell a social media marketing course, do keyword research to know the words people use when searching for such courses.

Then use those keywords to create copy that shows people how they can benefit from your course. That`s how you can attract people and persuade them to buy your courses.

Later, based on your budget, place bids to manage how much you can spend on your campaigns. Then, monitor your campaigns, see the performance, and make changes whenever necessary to improve and succeed. 

Check out this resource and learn the steps to creating a successful ad campaign.

Content Marketing

This involves creating, publishing, and sharing material such as texts, audio, videos, or photos online to attract clients to your business.

Content marketing helps spread brand awareness and convince your audience to perform your calls to action.

The methods used in content marketing include

Social Media Marketing

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This refers to creating content on social media to promote your business.

To succeed in social media marketing, you have to know your target audience, the channels they spend time on, and the kind of content they like.

That is because every social media platform has its accepted content, and to suit and entice the audience, you must align with it.

Some platforms accept only videos and others accept both videos and text.

To know the kind of content that fits your audience, research your competitors and see the social media platforms that bring them more conversions. You will also see clients' reviews and conversations about the products, which helps understand the tone of voice to use in your content and resonate with clients.

Then create content that helps your audience solve their needs, and you will attract clients to your business.

Here is more in-depth content about how to conduct social media marketing.

Infographic Marketing

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Infographics are pictorial representations of written content. They help break down complex content and make it easy for people to understand.

Not everyone likes reading text content and infographics help repurpose content, appeal to more people, and increase traffic.

To create appealing infographics, consider your audience`s intent and marketing goals.

Ensure your photos align with your products so people can resonate with your infographics. Moreover, create copy that entices your audience to perform your calls to action.

You can make your copy attention-grabbing by answering your target audience`s intent.

However, be sure to use short simple sentences, provide accurate data, and use readable font so people can easily understand your infographics.

You can market infographics on social media, emails, or blogs.

Infographics are comprised of many types, including

Statistical Infographics

These are types of infographics that represent visual representation of data like pie charts, bar graphs, icons, images, etc.

Informational Infographics

These refer to infographics mainly composed of texts. The texts are incorporated with attractive images, icons, and color schemes so they appeal to people.

Process Infographics

These are infographics used to summarize and simplify complex processes. They are used for creating easy-to-understand visual guides, customer journeys, recipes, etc.

Here is content to help you learn how to create infographics that drive clients to your business.

Blogging

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This refers to creating video, audio, photography, or text content and publishing it on a website to entice people to perform a particular action.

To create effective blog content, know your audience and answer their search intent. That`s possible through doing keyword research to know what keywords they use when searching for relevant content.

Then create in-depth, readable content and incorporate the keywords so search engines understand the search results to rank it. That`s how you can align your content with search queries and appear on the relevant search results.

This content explains simple SEO writing guidelines to enable you to create content that ranks and drives traffic.

Podcast Marketing

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Podcasts are digital audio or video file programs created on the internet. They are created in series which people can download and listen to even when offline.

What makes podcasts effective is that one can listen to them even when they are doing other tasks.

However, for your podcasting to convert people, they must be related to your audience and provide solutions to their needs.

Therefore, research your audience`s needs and create relevant content that motivates them to take your desired actions, which can be purchasing your products. 

For instance, if you teach freelance writing, ensure your podcasts cover the skills they need and how they can start and succeed.

Then encourage your audience to start the business and share their results. This will enable you to offer support if your audience faces challenges or fails. If one shares success, it motivates others to start.

That builds trust and authority, making it easy to convince people to purchase your products or services.

Want to start podcast marketing? Here is a more in-depth resource.

Video Marketing

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If you want to resonate with your audience more and entice them to buy your products or services, making videos is the perfect marketing method. It enables one to see the products or services and build more trust.

However, to create videos that attract an audience with a high potential to make purchases, consider your niche. If, for example, you are a poetry affiliate marketer, you can create poem videos. Then convince people to buy your affiliate products if they want to know how to create poems and earn money like you.

However, don`t publish your videos on any platform. Research the platforms that have a high chance of driving traffic to your videos. That`s because some niches do better on some platforms than others.

For example, you cannot drive more traffic to comic videos on LinkedIn than on TikTok.

To know the best platforms for your videos, do competitor research to know where businesses related to you drive their traffic from. This helps promote videos where clients are and increases the chances of driving traffic.

Moreover, create clear videos, use attractive thumbnails, and use a tone of voice relevant to your audience.

That is how you can attract more people to your videos and increase conversions

This resource can help you learn how to create videos that attract people and drive conversions.

Utilize Inbound Marketing and Increase Conversions to Your Business

Inbound marketing is not a guess business. It enables you to reach the targeted audience and increases the potential to make sales.

It helps focus on what people want and deliver value that serves their intent.

Inbound marketing is an affordable marketing method and if done well, it can give you long-term results.

What you need to concentrate on is attracting, engaging, and delighting your clients, and you will succeed.