The marketing world is filled with buzzwords, and it can be tricky to tell which tactics are the real deal and which are passing trends. Inbound Marketing has gained a lot of attention in the past few years. However, inbound techniques have been around long enough that they are unlikely to be replaced by the next big thing in the near future.
Not convinced about the strength of Inbound Marketing? It's getting more difficult to succeed with straightforward search engine optimization, but Inbound Marketing can improve your rankings, according to Business 2 Community.
Inbound Marketing: more leads and best SEO
89 percent of people conduct online research before making any purchase, which highlights the importance of optimized landing pages. Blogging is one of the most basic forms of inbound marketing, and this is one of the easiest ways to increase page rank because blogs bring more traffic to your website.
Web pages that utilize reliable inbound marketing tactics get more traffic. These companies are also able to generate more leads. In fact, going from 10 to 15 landing pages can result in 55 percent more leads, the article said.
The greater number of high converting landing pages you maintain, the more leads you can attract. For example, websites with 51 to 100 landing pages are able to gain 48 percent more traffic than sites with 1 to 50 pages. If you have the right content and forms to convert visitors, this can translate to a significant uptick in qualified leads.
It's important to remember that not all leads will become customers, but providing high-quality content and a good user experience has a strong influence on visitors. If content is targeted for your audience, you can increase the number of qualified leads you gain from your website.
Content vs. Inbound Marketing
Inbound Marketing has become synonymous with content, and some people in the industry worry that inbound will lose out because content marketing is a slightly newer concept.
Both concepts are similar, but there are subtle differences, and they may be worth paying attention if you want to maximize the effectiveness of your website as a lead-generation tool.
Inbound marketing emerged as consumers and business buyers migrated to the Internet to research different product offerings. Companies wanted a way to stand out, especially as the Web became more saturated with competing sites. Because Inbound Marketing improves online visibility, this tactic only exists on the Internet.
Content Marketing, on the other hand, can apply to offline materials. Good content focuses on the needs, challenges and goals of a particular target audience. Many brands often utilize different forms of Content Marketing at various stages of the sales cycle to build the relationship with potential customers.
While inbound marketing can boost SEO results, you need to be aware that Google's nearly constant updates pose a threat to inbound marketing if it's used alone. When people do a quick search, Google has started displaying a snippet of the answer at the top of the page above all other links. In some cases, this may answer the user's question, which means he or she doesn't have to click to the website. However, high-quality content will make people want to gain more in-depth knowledge and, more importantly, return to your website in the future.
You shouldn't see content and inbound marketing as working against each other, but rather as two techniques that work in conjunction to bring traffic to your landing pages, help you attract qualified leads and gain more customers.
Do you think Inbound or Content Marketing is more important?