6 Tips to Set Your Inbound Marketing Strategy Apart

There’s a lot of stuff on the internet. In fact, it’s been estimated that there are about 400 million active websites, with more being added every minute.

Inbound marketing refers to the practice of providing content that organically draws visitors into your website. This can be done through SEO-optimized blogs, social media posts, videos, and more.

So how do you successfully use inbound marketing in a world with 400 million active websites? How do you create content that stands out from the immense amount of content available to internet users?

Strategy.

There are certain measures you can take to create content and other tactics that provide real value to your target audience. It takes hard work and a lot of attention, but it can be done.
Here are 6 tips to help you set your inbound marketing strategy apart from your competition:

1. Know Your Target Audience
2. Speak Through Your Brand
3. Set a Schedule
4. Take Your Time With Topics
5. Use a Variety of Methods
6. Track Your Success and Adjust Your Plan

1. Know Your Target Audience

Your inbound marketing strategy isn’t going to address everyone. There simply isn’t a business in the world that addresses every single person. This leads to broad messaging that isn’t inspiring to anybody.

You need to find your audience. And building buyer personas is just the way to do that.
Buyer personas help you get a better idea of who’s using your services and how to best address their wants and needs. Addressing your inbound marketing efforts toward these buyer personas will work to attract advantageous traffic.

2. Speak Through Your Brand

Your brand identity is a combination of all of the customer-facing aspects of your company. It is the voice you use. It is how you present yourself. And all of your inbound marketing efforts need to use this voice.

Blogs, social media posts, videos — are all opportunities to solidify this brand identity and give your visitors a better idea of the personality behind your business.
Use this to your advantage. This is one of the best ways to set yourself apart from your competition — others might offer similar goods and services, but they won’t have your voice.

3. Set a Schedule

No matter what type of inbound marketing strategies you use, set a schedule and stick to it.

Blogs, for instance, should be published on a predictable timetable. Shoot for at least once every month. Once every week would be even better.

A schedule will help you to keep up with your updates. It lets you know when you haven’t posted in a while. Inbound marketing works best when fresh content is continually offered.

4. Take Your Time With Topics

Blogs are one of the best types of inbound marketing. They provide value to your visitors. They are great for attracting the attention of search engines. And they establish your website as an authority in your industry.

But all blog entries are not created equal. Quality truly matters. And putting in the legwork will help to get the most from your blog.

Put together a list of relevant keywords. These aren’t as important as they once were in terms of SEO, but they are still essential to guiding your content.

Use these keywords to build out topics. Make sure they are interesting and relate to your industry. And then when it comes time to write the actual article, do your research. Make it so solid that it could be viewed as a reference for anybody interested in the topic.

Quality plays a big role in your blog’s performance on search engine results pages.

5. Use a Variety of Methods

Inbound marketing is like a good soup — it gets better with every ingredient you add.

There are many different types of inbound marketing to choose from. What works best for your company will depend on your buyer personas. Where are you likely to find your customers? Or even more than that — where are your customers likely to find you?

Inbound marketing methods often work together to create a more effective strategy. For instance, you can share your well-researched blogs on social media in an effort to garner shares to get your content in front of more people.

More clicks lend more legitimacy to your blog, which helps it rise in search engine rankings, which again gets your content in front of more people.

6. Track Your Success and Adjust Your Plan

Google ads, social media posts, and website performance can all be tracked with a handful of different metrics. You want to look for signs of engagement and conversions.

What is bringing people to your website? Are they exploring further or leaving without clicking on anything else? Is there a type of content that performs better than others?

This information can be used to adjust your content moving forward. Capitalizing on your successes and learning from your failures will help you build a strong inbound marketing strategy that is sure to set you apart from your competition.

Contact JLB today!