11 Ideas To Improve Your Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is an incredible way to make your business grow online.

It’s foundational to the principles I teach my clients.

This method of passive lead generation is much more affordable than outbound marketing, and it usually gets better results.

It’s worth more in revenue, too, as it allows you to recoup the 97.6% of first-time visitors your website will lose.

This is one of those marketing strategies you want in your toolbox.

Value Exchange Is The Biggest Ingredient Of Inbound Marketing

The endgame of any inbound marketing strategy is to convert a site visitor to a lead and, eventually, a sale.

That’s why your ability to offer value to your visitors is so important.

77% of B2B buyers will gladly trade basic contact information for white papers or ebooks. Click To Tweet

Think about that for a minute.

Great value exchange can get you far.

That’s why you should probably prep for the results that the advice I’m about to offer will bring.

Start with a great piece of gated content.

That can provide a foundation for everything we’re going to talk about next.

Give Your Inbound Marketing Strategy Some Extra Juice

So let’s assume you’ve got some kind of inbound marketing attempt happening.

You’re writing content, you’re sharing to social, you’re responding to comments.

However, for some reason, you’re not getting the results you want.

Without taking a close look at what you’re specifically doing, I can’t tell you exactly what’s going wrong.

However, chances are, if you make the improvements I’m about to share with you, your problem will go away.

Let’s do this.

Optimize Your Site To Gather Leads

First thing’s first.

If your site isn’t designed to get you leads, you can forget about your inbound marketing strategy.

Because leads are the whole point of an inbound marketing strategy. Click To Tweet

Rather than look anywhere else for improvements, we’re going to start here.

So, look at your existing website.

Does it contain the most essential elements for a website to capture leads?

It needs:

• Lead capture forms
• A CRM
• Calls-to-action
• Gated content & special offers
• Pop-up forms
• An intuitive layout
• Frequently updated content
• Proof that you’re trustworthy

These are the basics that you need to gather leads.

There’s a ton more than that you can do if you want.

But if you haven’t got these down, nothing else we’re talking about today is going to matter.

Remember that your whole inbound marketing strategy comes back to this.

If it’s not working right, nothing else will.

Produce High-Quality Blog Content

I mentioned content.

If you want people to actually visit your site, you need to give them a reason.

That means providing value.

Value that helps them solve a problem.

The content that you produce on your blog is going to bring that value.

Tackle some of the most searched questions about your industry, product, or service.

Help guide your audience through their buying process.

There are tons of different blog formats you can tackle.

It’s important you do your research.

Content that gets made differently gets noticed.

That’s a huge benefit in a world that’s creating millions of blog articles a day.

By maintaining high-quality standards for your content, you’ll attract more people.

And to do that, you just need a simple strategy.

• Write posts that are longer than 3000 words. They get shared more.
• Speak to the needs your audience has. Use buyer personas to assist you.
• Produce evergreen content. It stays relevant long after you produce it.
• Work backward from your goal. Know in advance where you’re taking your reader.
• Build around pillar content. It strengthens your SEO.

If you can maintain strategies like this, you can easily produce the kind of quality content that draws in your target audience.

Cue Your Email List To The New Article

If you’re smart, you’re building an email list.

Not just your leads, but anyone else that might want to get information from you.

You should be putting together a list for an email newsletter. Click To Tweet

These are great for the people who are too shy to give any real information but still want to know about what your company does.

Give them an opt-in that isn’t intrusive.

Then use that list to bring quick traffic back to your newest articles.

See, if you’re making your emails entertaining, they’ll be eager to open them.

Not like the boring crap you normally find in your inbox.

So what do you do?

• Keep your email list clean.
• Stop making basic email marketing mistakes.
• Become an email marketing expert.
• Get creative with your campaigns.

When you get really great at sending emails that people want to read, they’ll look forward to what you send.

That’s inevitably going to translate to your newsletter.

The emails you send to notify your newsletter list about your latest article begin to bring in that traffic.

That means people will read it and your SEO will get boosted.

And more readers equal more leads.

Create Great Social Media Micro Content

Now you have content and your email list knows about it.

But if that list doesn’t consist of millions of subscribers, you’re going to need to grow it.

That’s where your social media channels come into play.

Access to millions of people who all may potentially need your services.

But for that, you’ll need great social micro content.

You’ll have to change the way you look at social media, though. Click To Tweet

If you’re like most small business owners, you see social as a sales opportunity.

However, you’re going to have to change that and start looking at it as a way to have a conversation with your audience.

Whatever you do, you can’t waste it.

Social media is the gateway to the internet for most people.

And you need to make sure you’re connecting with them there.

For starters, come up with a great content strategy.

If you can tap into the secrets that the industry uses, you can get exceptional reach.

With the right angle, you can start attracting new viewers to your blog.

New traffic translates to new leads.

See a theme yet?

Get Creative With An Infographic

Infographics aren’t new.

However, their power in terms of shareability is huge.

See, infographics allow big data to be shared in little bites.

Heh, get it?

Ok, nerd jokes aside, people really dig into infographics.

Especially on LinkedIn.

Infographics take data that might otherwise be boring to interpret and make it simple to understand.

Most of the time, the use of symbols allows larger numbers that might be hard to imagine become easy to visualize.

Because they’re something people can understand, they tend to increase site traffic by as much as 12% on their own.

They’re also easy to create using the software you either already have, like PowerPoint, or software you can access for little to no money, like Canva.

The more professional your infographic, the better it will do, but the ROI makes the time, effort, and optional cost worth it.

Break Your Blog Down Into A Few LinkedIn Articles

One of the best things you can do when it comes to inbound marketing is to spread your expertise around.

The idea is that you get your name out – as an expert – to as many people as you can.

Which is really what LinkedIn is about.

That’s the place on the internet that you build your personal brand.

To do that, take advantage of the content you’re already writing.

Convert some of the sub-topics into LinkedIn articles.

You know, that button they have on their posting box.

LinkedIn articles are like mini blog posts.

People are more apt to see what you post on LinkedIn since they get notified every time you publish an article.

That means they start seeing you as an authority before they’ve even made their way to your primary content.

Coupled with all the other benefits of LinkedIn articles, you’ve got a lot to gain.

All you have to do is select a sub-section from your pillar content and expand on it.

For example, I might decide to grab this section about articles and expand on what to do as it’s own article.

That way I could provide more value on the topic while simultaneously expanding the reach of my content.

Of course, I’d link back to this piece in the article, or maybe a related landing page offering something helpful for creating LinkedIn articles or using LinkedIn.

As long as I had a plan to add value to my audience while bringing them back to my site I’d be golden.

Do the same. Get LinkedIn traffic.

Respond To The Quora Crowd

If you want to establish your content as helpful, as well as determine what to produce next, why not find the questions people are asking?

That’s what Quora is all about.

People ask questions and the experts answer.

A quick search through any keyword you may have in mind will list a ton of questions to answer.

Pick and choose the ones you think you can answer with real depth and value.

Give the most complete and insightful answer you can.

If you already have content about the topic, include links to it in your answer.

However, try to give a real, useful answer before leaving a link.

If you don’t, you’ll come across as both lazy and a spammer, and that never looks good.

But if you can deliver real value, that’s going to improve your reputation as a leader in your industry.

If you haven’t yet got content to link back to, now is a great time to create it.

I mean, these are the questions that people most want to know about your industry.

There’s another space where you can take the same angle, although it’s more beneficial to the B2B companies than it is B2C.

Alignable is a site designed for small business owners to network and help each other solve common problems.

But their Q&A forum is just as robust and active.

Make sure that, once you create an article around a question you answered, you go back and update the answer with your link.

Always focus on driving traffic to additional information on your site.

Live Stream Something That Got A Reaction

If you’re asking for feedback and getting traffic, something in your pillar content should get a reaction.

It might be a good time to take that sub-section – and it’s reactions – to a live stream.

Thankfully there are tons of options. Look at

• Facebook Live
• Instagram
• Twitter/Periscope
• Twitch
• YouTube Live Streaming

Live video is a great way to connect with your audience and share a message with them on a broad scale.

It’s also a great spot for some Q&A.

And the best part is that you don’t have to be perfect.

The part of live streaming that people enjoy is the unpolished feel.

It’s not staged or artificial.

So, with a few best practices, you can be very successful at using it to spread your content and gather a larger audience.

It’s also a great place to find new topics for your content to cover.

Like I said, it’s a great spot for Q&A.

If you see a theme in those questions, it’s a good indicator that you need to cover that topic.

When people want to know about something in your industry, who better to answer than you?

And that kind of knowledge will drive them back to you for more.

Scour Your Feedback For User Generated Content

The things your audience and your clients say about you are incredibly meaningful.

These comments can build trust that you can’t on your own.

Offering the opinion of an uninterested party holds power.

They call it “user-generated content” because it doesn’t come from you.

However, if you’re lucky enough to receive the kind of UGC that can benefit your company, you need to spread it around as much as possible.

Trust is a huge asset for you to have.

People know how tough it is to endorse something.

If they encourage people to work with a company, the results get attached to them.

When someone has the confidence to endorse you, people understand it.

Make sure you’re on the lookout for the great things people have to say about your company.

Create microcontent around it, highlighting what’s being said.

Like this one we did for our client.

That kind of content also tends to get a reaction, which can spread your message further on social media.

That’s one of the most important elements because it can place you in front of a wider audience very quickly.

If more people see you, like you, and trust you, then more people will become your clients.

Turn Your Blog Post Into Great Video Content

Video content is a big thing online.

People will sit down and watch hours of YouTube videos on just about any topic that interests them.

If you can slide your content into that mix, you benefit hugely.

I mean, there are a ton of benefits.

The stats just don’t lie.

By translating your blog post into some format of video content, be it Facebook, IGTV, or YouTube, you can drive a ton of traffic back to you.

Plus, there’s a higher chance that your audience is going to take in your content.

Typically, blog readers won’t stick around for longer than a 5-minute read.

In fact, over 55% will only scan the title.

But videos can grab attention much quicker, getting most viewers to stick around for at least 75% of every video.

Infographic by IGW

Granted, we want them to stay longer, but that’s a big jump.

And that means you have a better opportunity to connect with them, prove your authority, and earn some trust.

In the end, that’s what you need from the content.

Videos aren’t hard to make, either.

If you have your phone and access to a few apps you’re ready to go.

Video gets shared a ton, too.

92% of mobile video viewers share the video.

It’s a great way to get exposure quickly.

Hell, if you wanted to, you could switch to only making videos to build an empire.

But if that’s not for you, at least take advantage of the medium to build your audience.

Spread Part Of Your Article Into Your Snapchat Story

Snapchat isn’t a social network I talk a lot about.

They’ve been a very ebb and flow place to try to market a business.

However, if you’re looking to build a personal brand, it’s a great place to grow.

People are fascinated with the “inside look” aspect of the platform.

People spend less time looking for the perfect snap, instead opting for the spur-of-the-moment shots.

But Snapchat can be used to tell good stories, too.

Take a portion of your article, in the same way I described, and lock your Snapchat record button.

Start to expand on the sub-topic in a “shoot from the hip” style that can only be afforded by a platform like Snapchat.

If you’re worried about building a presence on Snapchat when things don’t look great for the company, do the same on Instagram stories.

Because the platform is in direct competition, you can expect a similar result.

Well, likely better, considering Instagram Stories is twice as popular.

But either way, you get a great opportunity to dig into an idea from an insider perspective.

Your audience will love that, and they’ll likely come back for more.

Your Inbound Marketing Strategy Should Skyrocket

If you paid attention to all the gold I just handed you, and you’re ready to work, you should be able to make your marketing take off fast.

It’s not going to happen without the work, though.

That being said, apply the strategies I shared as you can handle them.

Get used to one before you add the next.

Put in the research and work to make the quality the best you can.

There’s no doubt that you’ll start seeing the results.