Inbound Marketing (IM), if done correctly, can completely transform your business, which, in turn, will allow you to bring in more leads, so that you can make more sales… Sound good?

Did you know that the chances of you having gone through an inbound marketing channel are pretty high?

Surprised?

Any article you’ve read and/or taken action is part of the IM process. If you’ve watched a video on YouTube and subscribed to a channel, that’s IM at play. This list goes on…

So, how exactly can you apply this to your business and increase your leads?

Let’s take a look at the 4 main inbound marketing principles:

Attract your client

We all want bundles of traffic coming to our website, don’t we? However, we don’t want just any old traffic. We need super-targeted traffic where there’s a possibility that we can convert them at a later stage. I spoke about

I spoke about buyer personas in a recent article and why you need to craft your own buyer persona.

Buyer personas:

tells you what prospective customers are thinking and doing, as they weigh their options to address a problem that your business resolves.

Your inbound marketing needs to attract your perfect client by tackling their pain points, common objections and challenges. If they require more information on your product or service, then you need to provide it in spades.

[bctt tweet=”A guide about #InboundMarketing for #leadgeneration” username=”XenmediaM”]

These clients are what fuels your business – not targeting all of your content around this demographic is a mistake.

You’ll want to craft all videos, articles and social media posts around your client. Being too general means you won’t be able to convert them into a sale because you’re not hitting those pain points or overcoming their objections.

A few tools you can use:

Content marketing – writing and publishing articles on your blog is probably the first step to applying inbound marketing.

The content needs to be both engaging and educational –  an article trying to sell the hell out of your services just won’t work and will turn your clients off. You need to try to help your client in a way that answers any questions they have.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – Your client will probably start their research online. They’ll pick their favourite search engine and type in a search query for help with whatever question they may have.

[bctt tweet=”A guide about #InboundMarketing for #leadgeneration” username=”XenmediaM”]

If you’ve done your job properly, you and your business page should be one of the first few results that appear. The only way of doing this is by improving the optimisation of your page.

This means ensuring you’re writing to the target keyword (the query or term your client typed in) and also by building links around the terms your clients are searching for.

Social media marketing – Once your content is finished, you will need to publish it to all of the relevant social media platforms you are registered with, like Facebook and Twitter.

Only post to the platforms your buyers hang out in – if you’re not sure, try asking your existing clients what platform(s) they regularly use.

Convert

Attracting your perfect client is one of the easier tasks. Converting them into prospects (leads) – not so much…

With all the noise online today, attracting and keeping your clients’ attention is getting harder and harder.

To qualify as a lead, your client needs to either fill out some type of form with their name and email address as contact information for you. In exchange for providing great content, you receive their contact details.

[bctt tweet=”A guide about #InboundMarketing for #leadgeneration” username=”XenmediaM”]

Not providing them with great content means your inbound marketing won’t work. It’s basically the law of reciprocity (to give and take mutually).

The content could be an article, eBook, whitepaper or a tip sheet. Whatever it is, it needs to be of a standard that they feel compelled to give you their details in exchange for more great info.

A few tools you can use:

Signup Forms – These forms can either be embedded within your content, at the side of a blog post or as a link within an eBook. The signup form allows your client to submit their information so that they can become a lead.

Calls-to-action – These are either buttons or links that encourage your client to take some form of action. They come in various forms such as buttons and text links. They are normally dotted around the page in a strategic way (top, middle, bottom and side of your content).

Landing pages – a landing page is used once they click on your “call-to-action”. The main job of this page is to get them to sign-up and submit their information. This page needs to look at bit different to your other web pages.

For example:

• Don’t have a top menu where they click and be sidetracked
• Have the benefits clearly laid out so they know what they’re getting.

Close

Congrats! You’ve managed to snag your perfect client, they’ve gone through your funnel and are now an active lead. Your job now is to convert this lead into a paying customer. There are a few tools available which can help you do that.

Closing Tools Include:

Contact Relationship Management (CRM) System – This will be the main hub of your client database. Use your CRM to track the leads you receive. You have the ability to either email or call them and even interact with them on social media.

Email – You have the choice of emailing your client with other educational info, then asking for the sale. The equation is 4 educational emails and then 1 call to action email with your offer. This can be done manually or via automation.

Email Marketing – This involves writing pre-written emails which will be synced to go out automatically over a period of time. Each lead will receive a series of these emails once they have subscribed or filled in a form. The beauty of using automation is, you only need to set this up once and it will then automatically send these messages out whenever someone signs up.

[bctt tweet=”A guide about #InboundMarketing for #leadgeneration” username=”XenmediaM”]

Delight

Like Google, your job is to provide the right answer to your clients’ questions. This is done by providing unique targeted content that your users actually want to consume.

Once this is in play, your job is to continue to provide useful information and then either upsell or cross-sell your other products or services.

This is also the right time to ask for referrals, recommendations and nice little testimonials to put on your website and stationery.

Added tools to do this:

Surveys – The best way of keeping clients happy is to ask them what they want or how can things be improved. This can be done with either an online or offline survey. Use this feedback to improve your service and supply new products.

Social monitoring – Keep an eye on your clients via social media and start conversations with them. If they have questions or leave comments, be sure to respond to these promptly.

Summary

So, there you have it. This is the inbound marketing strategy that you can follow in your business.

Once you’ve converted your client, the key is to provide as much value as possible over a long period of time. This is by way of educational content and tools and tips that can actually help them.

You’re using your “buyer persona” to craft the sort of content your clients crave – you do this by answering their question, overcoming objections and tackling their pain points.

Does inbound marketing interest you? Are you doing this at the moment? I’d love to hear your views?