Inbound marketing is an effective way to get your customers to come to you. But where do you start? This guide will cover three inbound marketing tips that you can quickly implement to generate more leads.
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Tip #1. Turn Your Blog Posts into Ebooks
The first of these inbound marketing tips is a bit controversial. There’s some disagreement in the marketing community about whether you should gate your content. Some say put everything behind a form so that people have to hand over their contact information to download it. Others say you should make everything freely available on your website.
At Raindance, we say, “Why not both?”
Most of your website visitors aren’t going to pore through your entire website. Think about it. Say you’ve repackaged one of your blog posts as a lead magnet at the end of a relevant article. Is anyone really going to notice that you also published it as a blog post?
Even if they do, it’s not like you’re charging them for free information. They’re just giving you their email address for a PDF copy.
And some people actually prefer to download an article, even if it is provided on the website. We’ve seen companies generate leads by having a form at the top of the post to download the same post. It’s not a trick. You’re just offering them the download in case they don’t have time to read the article right away.
For example, check out this post on Advertoscope:
That form converts at 1 percent. Even though the list is at the end of the article!
If you don’t feel like doing the mental math, that’s 100 leads per 1,000 visitors. You’ve already created the content, why not throw it in a PDF and use it to build your email list?
Tip #2. Segment Your Audience Based on the Buyer’s Journey
Most people don’t think of digital advertising when they’re developing their inbound marketing strategy. But inbound is more than just content marketing. You can apply inbound methodology to your paid campaigns to make them more effective.
Here’s the easy way to do it. Categorize your website pages based on which stage of the Buyer’s Journey they address. You can get more granular as you go (e.g., segmenting visitors based on their buyer persona). But the quickest way to get started is to focus on the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel.
For example, blog posts on broad topics are generally speaking to prospects at the top of the funnel. They may be in the Awareness stage, or they may not even be fully aware of the problem yet. Either way, this is a good time to begin building your credibility with potential customers. Your features page or blog posts covering different solutions to the problem you solve address the Consideration stage. Then pages like your pricing page and demo signup page address the Decision stage.
So wherever you’re running ads, build a remarketing audience for each stage of the funnel. Then, build ads that are relevant to prospects in each stage of the Buyer’s Journey. And—this (might?) go without saying—promote content that is relevant to their stage of the Buyer’s Journey.
This will also work for your email marketing campaigns.
Tip #3. Add Calls-to-Action to Your Content
Make sure you’re getting the most value out of every piece of content you publish. Wherever it makes sense (and doesn’t hurt the user experience) offer your readers additional value behind a form. (Out of all of the inbound marketing tips we’ve covered this one is the easiest one to implement.)
Single Grain posts multiple calls-to-action in every blog post. Here’s an example:
You can even use an inline form (a form that shows up right in the middle of your content). That way, readers can submit the form without having to leave the content they’re reading.
Of course, to make this work, you’ll need to have relevant offers that prospects want. Here are some lead magnets to consider for each stage of the Buyer’s Journey.
Take a look at the content you already have and see what can be repackaged as a lead magnet. For example, most blog posts can easily be repurposed into an ebook. Just throw them in a Word or Google Doc and save them as a PDF. (Or get creative and use Canva.)
You may also find that your current content includes checklists or information that could be turned into a checklist. Once you’ve squeezed everything you can out of your current content, it’s time to create new resources from scratch. You can do this in-house, hire a freelancer, or have an inbound marketing service do all the work for you.
Put These Inbound Marketing Tips Into Action!
So there you have it. Three inbound marketing tips that will help you start generating more leads today. But they only work if you put them into practice. If you need a team in place to handle your content strategy and execution, let’s talk.
