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The 3 Pillars of Inbound Marketing for a High Covnerting Website
The 3 Pillars of Inbound Marketing for A High Converting Website
You might be wondering … “When did the marketing world change so much that nowadays people are saying ‘inbound’ and ‘content’ as if they are on repeat? What does this mean for my marketing plans? And above all, how can I apply inbound marketing to my business?” 

Inbound marketing is a methodology that aims to turn strangers into customers and fans of your business, without fighting for attention in the traditional marketing sense. It is simply a way of attracting potential customers to your website through creating valuable and unique content and sharing it to spread the love. Ahem, and information. Creating content on your website that people find attractive and useful means you have qualified prospects who will possibly come back for more if you continue to provide the same quality of content for them.

What is the difference between inbound marketing and the traditional understanding of marketing for your website? Inbound marketing is not interruptive; it is voluntary. Inbound marketing is the love child of right content, right person and right time.

When it comes to creating an unbeatable inbound strategy for your business, there are three main pillars you need to know by heart:

1. Content - the fuel of inbound marketing

2. Visibility & UX - the directions to inbound marketing

3. Strategy - the brain of inbound marketing

Content
Homepage

There is a famous saying that tells us not to judge a book by its cover, but people do judge your business by your homepage, which is your cover. The homepage is your storefront. It is the first impression visitors get of your business and is the foundation for inbound marketing. It should reflect your business in the best way possible, while also interacting with the visitor to initiate a trusting relationship.

Inbound marketing is all about making the most out of every opportunity to connect with your visitors and getting qualified leads for your sales funnel. Your homepage is the place to make a first impression … and you can only leave a first impression once.

Keep this in mind when designing your homepage and follow this short list of items that should be included:
  • Brand logo
  • “Follow us” buttons
  • Search bar
  • Social profile links
  • Noticeable CTAs (contact us, downloads, request demo, etc.)
  • Attractive images and easy navigation (is the customer support page or contact page easily accessible?)
Landing Page

Landing pages are web pages with a single focus: converting visitors into leads. They contain a specific offer or value and make it very clear what the visitor will get from this page: a product demo, an ebook, a coupon, a consultation, or an offer of this nature. In return for an attractive offer, you can capture your visitor’s information through a lead-capture (conversion) form. Landing pages are also great for search engines, because they contain focused and local content on your business, and the more content you have, the higher your digital visibility.

Make the most of your landing page and optimize your results with these best practices:
  • An action-oriented headline that is the same as your offer title
  • Subheader to emphasize the value proposition
  • Relevant image
  • Well-structured profiling form that is as short as possible (people are more willing to fill forms when they are shorter)
  • Concise and catchy summary or copy of your offer
  • No navigation menu to distract the visitor from the landing page
  • Clear CTA button referencing what the visitor will receive (“Request free consultation” button instead of “Submit”)
  • Trust symbols if you are asking for sensitive information such as payment details
Blog

Blogs are a substantial piece of inbound marketing, where every new post is an opportunity to get found by the search engines, and prospects, which means posting regularly is essential. The information you provide is long lasting, staying in the digital space until you remove it; therefore it has the potential to bring in leads continuously. In fact, Hubspot notes that 1 in 10 blog posts are compounding, meaning organic search increases their traffic over time.

Here are some must-have items and tips for your blog posts and page:
  • An attractive headline
  • Section headings
  • Featured image
  • Short yet informational paragraphs
  • Relevant keywords
  • Internal links
  • Social sharing button
  • Comments section and noticeable CTAs (if appropriate)
Social media

Statista’s research shows that as of 2016, daily global social media usage amounted to 118 minutes, and that the social outlets are becoming our main communication networks. These figures alone make it inevitable for businesses to own social media accounts. Staying active on these platforms can enable you to engage with your buyer persona and promote and share your amazing content with your followers.

With slight differences for each social network, these best practices can be applied to all:
  • Set your profile photo as your logo and your company name as the username
  • Post regular updates
  • Engage with your audience
  • Use high-quality images
  • Use shortened and trackable links to analyze which pieces of content are attracting more attention
Email

Email is one of the most powerful ways to convert a lead into a customer, and yet it is something that is frequently discounted. Of online customers, 77% prefer to receive permission-based promotions via email, which certainly shows that it is a method of communication to take seriously. To build an email list, make sure to include a signup form on your webpage, blog page and any other page where you think it might be relevant. You can also include a signup form in the footer of your website to appear on all pages. Opt-in new visitors and connect with them whenever you have new content that might interest them: an offer, a product launch, a newsletter or follow-up emails along your conversion funnel. Three-quarters of companies agree that email offers "excellent" to "good" ROI.

Determine an email marketing strategy, select which platform or service provider you want to use for your emails (Hubspot, Mailchimp, Aweber, etc.) and make sure to include these things:
  • Catchy, attractive subject line
  • Recognizable “from” name
  • Personalized greeting and short and readable text with clear message
  • At least one CTA
  • Company branding
  • Unsubscribe link
  • Social sharing buttons or links
Visibility & UX
Customer centricity

Businesses often fall into the trap of putting their website traffic or revenue before customer satisfaction. However, inbound methodology places the customer above everything, and this is the factor that distinguishes it from outbound marketing. Inbound is inherently a customer-focused winning strategy to develop long-lasting and revenue-generating relationships.

The primary goal is to provide useful and valuable information for your target audience, so seeing this as an opportunity for a sales pitch will be the wrong maneuver.

Expert Tip
EXPERT TIP
Focus on generating high-quality pieces that target a specific audience, have a clear message and provide a value offer. Be open to customer feedback to amplify your strengths and improve your weaker aspects.
Discoverability

Inbound marketing revolves around creating unique and regular content that interests your target audience, but content creation alone does not necessarily mean that people can find you. In order to be discoverable, your content should be SEO-friendly, which means that it should be prepared in a way that is focused around keywords, phrases and concepts that your customers might search for, along with optimizing the structure of your posts so that search engines can find them.

SEO is one of the most important pieces of the inbound methodology. Generally speaking, it refers to the idea of optimizing content for discovery and conversion across a wide spectrum of the web and the search engines. Long story short: the recipe to amplify the reach and conversion of your content is to create great content with strong SEO practices.

Data-driven design

Your marketing strategy can evolve as trends and habits change, but the importance of data-driven decision making is likely to remain forever. Data is a priceless asset to your business, so make sure to appreciate it and utilize it in the best possible way.

Expert Tip
EXPERT TIP
Don't act on gut instincts, the opinion of the management team or your personal experience when you are considering adding or removing sections or buttons. Focus on facts and numbers and use what works and what doesn’t to guide you to a decision.
Simplicity

Similar to the effect of website speed (see below), a crowded and complicated page design has the potential to drive visitors away, as they will not be willing to spend more than a few seconds to search for a contact button for example. Concentrate on simplicity and an easy user experience where visitors can easily find what they are looking for. Navigation and clarity are important, and so is adopting the "less is more" philosophy.

Expert Tip
EXPERT TIP
If you can say something in two words or three, go for two. If you can skip a page or a button to guide the visitor to a particular point, skip it.
Responsiveness

Mobile is the big trend that is sweeping marketing, and we cannot emphasize enough the importance of making sure your web page, newsletters and social media content are responsive for desktop, tablet and smartphone. In fact, Google released the Mobilegeddon update in April 2015 to enhance mobile user experience and better accommodate mobile audiences. With this update, Google filters out sites that are not mobile-friendly by ranking responsive sites higher in web search.

Website speed

The effect of a slow-loading website is devastating for your site traffic and conversion rates. In fact, 40% of people abandon a website that takes 3 seconds or longer to load. The abundance of content has decreased people’s patience and attention span, and the time that users will dedicate to anything is now notably low. Even if the structural and visual elements of your inbound strategy are perfect, site performance can break it for you.

Expert Tip
EXPERT TIP
Site speed (aka page-load time) and site uptime can affect your site’s bounce rate, customer satisfaction and search engine ranks, so make sure that you put website speed as a top priority of your inbound strategy to maintain your overall marketing success.
Strategy
The plan

The importance of having a comprehensive inbound strategy can’t be emphasized enough, as it involves complex, specialized and demanding tasks. In fact, nearly half of marketers state that the "lack of an effective strategy" is the biggest obstacle in achieving inbound marketing goals. In order to increase the ROI and success of your inbound marketing efforts, make sure to create a full marketing plan and overall strategy including goals, buyer personas, customer journey, content matrix and an editorial calendar.

Tools

Similar to any new strategy you plan to implement, you might seek to use some tools to help you optimize and automate your processes through simplifying repetitive tasks. Marketing automation is one of the best tools of inbound that streamlines the process of lead nurturing while maintaining the authenticity of your content. With a smart marketing automation tool, you will be able to track the activity and engagement of your leads and their position along your sales funnel, which will help you deliver targeted messages at the right time. Remember the right time, right person and right content crossroads? Marketing automation will highlight the intersection for you.

Team

There is no doubt that inbound marketing requires effort and dedicated attention, so your first step should be deciding who will lead this strategy and who will be included in the team. Although we could suggest how an ideal inbound team should be formed, one structure does not fit all businesses (company size, current marketing team and budget are some determining factors). Evaluate your current marketing team to see if you can allocate resources from that, or whether you need to build a new inbound marketing team or outsource. Keep in mind that a complete inbound team often includes content writers, marketing managers, developers, graphic designers, PR and UX specialists.

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