Questions

I'm in a unique position to be first to market for a new women's business, launched in November. Press efforts are paying off with some great recent write ups and more to come. Social media has been slower, but growing as I've started collaborating with bloggers. The most immediate and significant sales come from the press, but these live only as long as you're on the front page of a major website. How do I use this traction towards my inbound marketing? I'd like to develop a strategy but my first dilemma is that women are not necessarily looking for my product. They are converting, asking questions, and then telling friends once they purchase it. I'm considering affiliate marketing but I'm unsure if this is the right approach.

Inbound marketing has been phenomenally successful for many large and small businesses, particularly those in the business-to-business sector. Its use has been less widely reported in commercial business-to-consumer sectors. However, I believe that anyone can use inbound marketing to promote themselves and their products and services. It’s about finding the right suite of tools and tactics for you and the customers you want to attract. Inbound marketing is a combination of tools, tactics, and channels but it revolves primarily around content. Content is king in inbound marketing. Content is the key to getting people talking about your main marketing messages and attracting them into your site, where you can tell them more about your brilliant business.
1. Sticky business blogging: A business blog should become the central point for all inbound marketing efforts, primarily because you own this space. Social networks are great, but you don’t own those channels; you only ever rent them. So, having your own piece of digital ‘real estate’ will allow you to bring people into a space you own and control. One of the misconceptions about blogging is it must be daily and comprise a dose of 300-500 words. A great business blog is created around and for your customers. If your audience is likely to respond better to images or video, then create a blog that is very visual and makes use of interesting photography and video. The aim of a business blog is to create original content your target audience will love and share and keep them coming back for more.
2. Integrated social networking: Social networking is another key inbound marketing tactic. The aim of successful social networking is to build a following and an active community around your brand using a combination of content creation and curation. Any SME (small-to-medium sized enterprise) or start-up should consider leveraging the right social network to build awareness of their brands, products and/or services. The cool thing about social networks is that they can be used to both create and curate content. Social networks are therefore perfect to use alongside blogs to build an engaged audience around a brand. The key to good social networking is to choose the social network that works for you and your customers. There is really no point in creating an impressive Facebook presence if most of your prospects and customers are hanging out on Google+. Likewise, don’t invest in Pinterest if you’re likely to get more value using Twitter. Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest - choose the social networks that best fit with your brand and customers.
3. Audience focused SEO: Search is how we find things on the web and we use search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Baidu, to discover, gather and filter information. Search is still one of the most popular online activities (along with email) and is likely to continue to grow alongside the rise of other online activities, such as social media. There are currently more than three billion searches per day on Google and search is still thought to bring in the most qualified, targeted traffic to one’s website. 80% of people count on the organic results that appear when they search for something online. Despite the huge organic search volume, companies spent $35 billion on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising in 2011, compared to $2 billion on SEO. Nearly 90% of companies’ marketing budgets are being spent on locations where only 20% of the clicks happen; revealing the popularity and reliance on bought media. However, small businesses have limited resources. So, why not invest in activity to get your website listed in the natural search results that clearly matter more to most to people? Good SEO is not about stuffing as many keywords as you can into your content, titles and meta data. It is about ensuring your website is designed and structured in a way that allows visitors to successfully find the information they want about you so that they can make a more informed purchasing decision. Your SEO aim is to be found in search results for specific keywords relating to your brand by developing an online presence that is content-rich, engaging, and meaningful to your target market.
4. Effective social search leads to content sharing: If search equates to discovery, then discovery leads to sharing. As social media continues to grow and impact how companies do business (hint: social media does not have to be owned by marketing), people's search results are beginning to be affected by their social graph; i.e. what their friends and contacts on social networks are saying. Social media is influencing traditional search engine results in a big way and every company, big and small, should take note of this trend and act. For example, if someone conducts a Google search on 'cupcake shop Derby', the results are likely be a mix of what your contacts on Twitter and Google+ like, in addition to the usual organic listings. Google is attempting to augment its traditional search results with what your friends are saying they are interested in. This is a big deal because it means old-school 'black hat' SEO techniques are no longer valid. Google, the UK's no.1 search engine, is putting more emphasis on quality content. Increasingly, if you do not have quality content, from blogs and social networks for example, you are unlikely to get the shares, likes and +1s required to get Google's attention. Google is basically saying that if people repeatedly like and share your content based on the keywords and phrases used in a search, then it follows that your site must be relevant to a particular audience. Social search strategy should focus on staying relevant in search by ensuring that your brand is being found, talked about, and discussed throughout the social web.
5. Email marketing: As the wave of interest in social media continues, email marketing is often overlooked. Despite this, email marketing remains one of the most effective inbound marketing tools for small businesses. Email marketing’s goal is to send out interesting relevant messages to a group of willing subscribers on a periodic but regular basis. As with all other forms of inbound marketing, email is about developing a relationship with your prospects and customers by offering valuable content, i.e. your email content should not focus exclusively on selling things. Email marketing is a straightforward, easy to implement tactic and the results from an email marketing campaign are often quite easy to analyse. Social media activity can be integrated with your email marketing strategy too. For example, always ensure your emails contain clear links to your social media outposts and encourage your readers to share your email content with their social networks. Email marketing strategy should aim to build a database of subscribers and to send out frequent, interesting emails that are engaging, deliver value to recipients and keep your brand in the front of your audience’s minds.

Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath


Answered 3 years ago

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