Inbound Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Inbound marketing is a term that’s being used and more and more frequently by Internet marketers and business owners. It refers to the process of creating and sharing content for the purpose of attracting new customers, clients and qualified leads. This is in stark contrast to “outbound marketing,” in which business owners promote their products or services directly to their target demographic.

So, how can you leverage the power of inbound marketing with your business?

Identify Target Demographic

The first step in launching a successful inbound marketing campaign is to identify your target demographic. In other words, who is typically interested in your products or services? If you run a wedding dress boutique, for instance, your target demographic would be recently engaged women who are planning to get married. On the other hand, if you own a small advertising firm, your target audience would be small business owners and entrepreneurs.

By identifying your target demographic, you’ll be able to craft content that’s engaging and relevant to them, which should result in a higher response rate.

Content Delivery Platforms

Now before you begin crafting content in hopes of attracting new customers and leads, you need to decide how exactly you intend to deliver the content. There are dozens of different ways to deliver content online, some of which include a business website, blog, social media, podcasts, videos, and whitepapers. With that said, it’s usually best for small business owners to begin with their official website.

Publishing fresh, relevant content on your website will encourage higher search rankings, which in turn attracts new customers and leads. As your website grows, however, you may want to branch out into other content delivery platforms, such as a separate blog and social media networking.

Crafting Content for Inbound Marketing

Not every piece of content that you publish is going to attract customers or leads. On the contrary, some of it may go completely unnoticed by your audience, at which point it will have no effect on your sales. You can give your inbound marketing a jolt of life, however, by crafting exceptional-quality content.

Some business owners take the easy route by churning out generic, mediocre-quality content with no real meat or sustenance. Unfortunately, this usually has little-to-no effect on their sales, which is why it’s a good idea to place an emphasis on quality content.

Tips for Creating Quality Content for Inbound Marketing:

• Answer questions your target audience is likely to ask.
• Remember, content doesn’t have to be limited strictly to text. Videos, images, slideshows, PDFs, and infographics can also be used for inbound marketing.
• Lists work well for inbound marketing because other webmasters may link back to them.
• Tell anecdotal stories to demonstrate principles or how your business has solved a problem.
• Promote your content on social media for an initial jolt of traffic.

Have any other inbound marketing tips that you would like to share with our readers? Let us know in the comments section below!