Is your website bringing in new business for you?
Many websites, sadly, do not. They are little more than billboards on the Internet, talking about their organizations for anyone who happens by. This was fine 5 or 10 years ago. But today, websites can be so much more. Inbound Marketing gets the most out of them.
Simply put, Inbound Marketing is designed to turn your website into a lead generating machine. It is a process that begins by generating traffic for your site, traffic that is interested in your products or services. It converts that traffic into leads, nurtures those leads over time and works to turn them into customers. Then it tracks the whole effort, from beginning to end, to determine what’s working best and what can be improved.
Here’s how the process works:
Step 1: Generate Traffic
- New, compelling content is created on the website
- Blogging is used to make content easily accessible
- Content is found by targeting the right type of visitor using search engine optimization (SEO), sending new traffic to the site
- Social media is used to promote your content, sending traffic to the site
- Email campaigns promote your content, sending traffic to the site
- Public relations promotes your brand, products, services, sending traffic to the site
Step 2: Convert Traffic into Leads
- Visitors to your website come across free offers (via call-to-action buttons, graphics) appealing to them specifically
- Offers can be free eBooks, white papers, audio, video, screencasts, webinars, free trials, consultations
- Visitors enter contact information in order to download your free offers
- Lead information is captured, stored
Step 3: Nurture Leads to Become Customers
- Once leads are in they system, they are put into automated lead nuturing campaigns
- Leads receive periodic emails with additional useful information, offers
- The content they download and pages they visit on site are tracked, developing valuable information on your leads
- As they become sufficiently engaged, these leads can be approached as potential customers
Step 4: Analyze the Process
- All sources of site traffic are captured, analyzed over time
- Leads are tracked from their conversion on the first offer through all their activities on the site
- Each landing page and offer are analyzed, calculating conversion rates
- All customer conversions are entered into a database to close the analysis loop
The important thing to understand about Inbound Marketing is that it is a proven process, with a measurable percentage of traffic becoming leads and a measurable percentage of leads becoming customers. Once the process is put in place, it will generate results. The amount is determined by how much effort is put into content production and promotion.