6 Foolproof Inbound Marketing Strategies for Explosive Growth

In this post, we want to cover a couple options that will expand your SEO efforts, your on page marketing efforts and drive traffic to your website through inbound marketing strategies. There are hundreds of ways you can grow your business with Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing; however, some of the tips below are a great place to start.

Publish a guide to your industry or expertise … And then give it away for free.

This one is counter-intuitive. Shouldn’t you be charging for your knowledge? Don’t you deserve to be paid for your work? Of course you do! So why should you publish an ebook that is thousands and thousands of words long, and then give it away for free?

The answer is that when you give your customers something of value for free, they will come back for more. This is the entire concept of inbound marketing and content marketing. Whether you are creating landing pages, resource pages, blog posts or all of the above, inbound marketing is crucial for your online success. You are getting them in the door, and you are proving your worth. We’re not saying you should give away all your knowledge for free, but that you should give your customers something that will change their lives or their businesses enough that when they are done with it, they will be excited to pay for your full product.

Do make sure that your free guide is directly related to what you are selling. Don’t publish a free guide to grooming cats if your business is photography. Instead, think about publishing an abridged or surface-level explanation of your secret strategy, or an introduction to your area of expertise or a list of resources.

Ideas to consider for Inbound Marketing

Free list of resources
How-To content on your industry
Video Marketing of DIY projects
Excel spreadsheets of free resources
How-To Guide on your services
How-To Guide on your products
Top Ideas to make your product better
Top Ideas to make your services increase a higher ROI

You may also want to check out this list of 50 great inbound marketing ideas. This should help you to get the juices flowing.

Optimize long-tail keywords

When it comes to keywords in content, there are a few commonly-accepted ways of incorporating them. You can go after the biggest, most searched keywords. You can go after the most keywords. You can try to increase your keyword rank on your site regardless of what keyword it’s for. None of these strategies are actually particularly effective.

The most effective way to get great results for your keywords isn’t to target the most popular keywords or to cram your pages with tons of different keywords. After all, you are never going to get on the front page of Bing or Google for a major keyword like “technology,” no matter how great your tech business is. And cramming your content with tons of different key words will just get you somewhere in the middle of search results for all those keywords.

The key here is to do the counter-intuitive thing: find one or two super-targeted, niche key words that get right to the heart of your business, and optimize the heck out of them.

Use your location. When people search for your business, that’s what they’re going to be typing in anyway.
Use a specialty that stands out from the crowd.
Think about what you have to offer that your competition doesn’t – this is something you can really push in keywords.

When you optimize niche key words, you are taking advantage of the long tail. You’re not trying to compete with Walmart, because you are targeting customers who don’t want to go to Walmart to find what they want. They want what you have to offer, so focus on telling them that you’re in business!

Build up your personal brand identity.

Your brand identity is important. But if you can make your customers feel like they know you personally, they are going to be a lot more engaged and loyal. After all, we are all craving personal connection. So don’t be afraid to put yourself in your brand. Let your customers see you as a person – share what you are passionate about, tell a bit of your life story, and let your customers know what is going on in your life. Your reward will be customers who buy from you not just because they like your product, but also because they genuinely like you.

Engage on Social Media

Social media is where your customers hang out. You shouldn’t expect to drive most of your conversions via Facebook or Twitter – your website is still the best for that. But your customers want to be able to talk to you, and social media is the place for that. Have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ presence, and when people mention you or talk to you, make sure to respond! This shows that you have good customer service, it increases your reach, and it impresses your potential customers. Social Media Marketing doesn’t take much. 1 simple post per day can increase your social media engagement by a huge percentage.

Put a pop-up on your site

This is a point that is going to be controversial, but we stick by it anyway. Pop-ups are obnoxious and annoying, but they really work. Offer some free information, a free guide, or a free ebook on your pop up, which customers just have to enter their email address to be able to get. You’ll be amazed at how your email list grows just by this one trick! There are hundreds of popup plugins to choose from but this list will give you a good idea of where to start.

Guest blog, and host articles from other bloggers

Guest blogging is an incredibly effective way to increase your inbound traffic and to give yourself credibility. The concept is pretty simple – you write a great piece and give it to another site (preferably one whose audience you want for yourself), with the agreement that it will be attributed to you and include a link to your site. Regular readers of that site will be impressed by your post and head over to your site to find out more about you. You also get credibility, because your work has been featured on another highly respected and prestigious site, which means you obviously have something good to say.

This can work the other way too – you can host another writer, so they will write something that you will publish on your site, with the same attribution and link back to them. This will send their readers to you too (as they will probably post on their site that they have a piece up at your site). It will also build up your credibility, because if an impressive writer hangs out on your site then you must be in the cool kids’ club.