Inbound Marketing

To become number one on Google organically takes some time.  In the mean time inbound marketing can help you to jump start everything.  You need to generate revenue with your investment in your website.  You didn’t spend all that time and money for it to not provide a return.  So you need go out and drive traffic in to your website.  Hence, inbound marketing.  This needs to be figured into the budget of your initial web project.  Don’t make this an after thought.  It is too valuable.

Since you are going to be spending money on getting this traffic you need to do all you can to leverage it. I believe this needs to be accomplished through a multilayered approach.  Just one method is not good enough.  But you also have to be sensitive of not being over bearing with your attempts to solicit them.

KEYWORDS

The first step in this process is to go back to the very beginning of SEO and grab your keyword list.  I will use this list because we put those words in your website.  Now I will use them to find customers looking for what you offer.   We craft ads using those keywords.

LANDING PAGES

I will use your keywords and often some long-tail keywords like “buy…”  and so on.  So if you are going to be spending the money to get them to your web site you don’t want to spend money on generic things and sending them to the index, or front page.  You want to specifically target products or services in your ads using a branded experience when landing on your website on what is called a landing page”.

There are specific layouts and proven methods for this.  Don’t recreate the wheel.  You’re probably not smarter than everyone else that came before you and certainly neither am I.  Let me try what is proven to have worked in the past so we can collect data to hone closer to your target audience.

INVEST IN MARKETING

Now that you have your foundation set properly with a place to send your new traffic next you invest in some advertising in either SEM (Search Engine Marketing).  The big players are Google Ads and Bing Ads or PPC (Pay Per Click) ad with places like Facebook for adults, Tik Tok for young people and others. There may be many other venues appropriate for your brand and products or services.  Although Google Ads is the 800lbs gorilla as I like to call them, small to medium sized businesses should consider Bing Ads.  They are cheaper and easier to manage but of course, way less traffic.

But in today’s market?  No business should ignore at least testing the waters with social media ads like with Facebook Ads for your adult audiences and the already mentioned Tik Tok for young people. They tell these social media companies everything about themselves, their interests, things they need.  It knows.  Then you pay to get your ads in front of those people.  Ever been creeped out by ads that follow you around?  Google and Facebook are responsible for that.

To provide visitors a feeling of comfort you want to have your advertisement and your landing page look similar.   That is your branding that gives clients confidence in doing business with you.

ONSITE FEATURES

I mentioned the importance of landing pages.  They are designed to get people to buy on the first visit.  But really, if you get 10% and above conversion rate you are doing really well.  But you can’t let that other 90% get away without at least trying to get their data.  This is where the pops come in as found on this site when you scroll down the front page.  You offer your visitors an incentive to give you their contact info so that you can earn their business.

At a minimum every website must have a capture form for a newsletter even if you never plan on publishing one. These have been used since websites started.  Even if you are not going to do an official newsletter, this allows you to at least reach out to them if they do not become a client on that first visit.

Calls to Action (CTA) are important in today’s marketing.  People have been trained to respond to this marketing over the years and it works.  You tell someone or urge them to call or give them the information in an easily accessible form and they will use it. Now, with 60% of all searches going on on phones, you really need to have a clickable phone number right on the top of your site so if visitors really want to call someone they immediately can.  Get them to interact with you.  Then you have a chance to earn their business.

Click Funnels have proven invaluable to business to encourage them to convert as first time visitors. From a source like SEM or PPC marketing people land on pages that are very specific to encouraging them to buy.  They can click a buy button and get right to the product and right to the buying process in less than 5 clicks.  Ideally 3.

All of these methods and more need to be employed even if a pay for marketing campaign isn’t used.  These same things can be used in conjunction with a quality back-links program.