I recently reviewed an article by Marketing Sherpa. In that article, they shared research results of a survey asking marketers what were some of their more important inbound marketing tactics that generated leads.
The chart from that article is included here. The one of the most important inbound marketing lead sources over the last 12 months, and likely to continue will be SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Social media is a close second, and as the search engines continue to take social connections and indexing of social networks into account, social media will likely continue it’s impact on SEO.
Many organizations struggle with SEO. They know it is important, but there are so many things tied to being found organically in the search results. You can start with the basics. Here’s a link to an article about what key on-page SEO elements will help get you to the top of the search engines.
Our team found interesting that email marketing and blogs were also very close. Email marketing is more of an outbound marketing tactic. Still, most clients Mindscape works with have cultivated and grown their own email databases from people who are generally interested in what they have to offer. The argument could be made that email marketing is outbound, inbound, lead nurturing and simply marketing communications.
Blogs, that is a big one! Blogs are a good way to generate leads because they should be updated often, including relevant content (written, graphs, videos, etc) to the audience. Blogging is a good SEO tactic because the search engines crave new, fresh content as they index web pages. More important to lead generation is that your prospects are searching for products and services to solve their problems. Including your expertise, demos and information geared toward searchers in your blog content is the best approach for SEO and lead generation. (Blogs and content marketing is another conversation).
We’re in a digital world, where more and more consumers have the need for instant gratification, finding answers via Google. Social connections are the new word of mouth; posting questions for your friends or followers to answer, provide recommendations or resources they know of often provide better answers than we could find on our own.
Whether you’re B to B or B to C, inbound marketing should be a key component to your marketing strategy. You’re still appealing to people. Understand who they are, how they search for what you have to offer, deliver that information (content) in ways that are easy to understand and consume, with strategically placed calls to action.
What have you found to be your most successful inbound lead sources? What challenges of SEO or inbound marketing can I help you with?
