When fully optimized using inbound marketing practices, modern websites have the power to consistently generate leads. These websites work day and night, engaging with visitors and encouraging them to take the next steps in becoming qualified prospects and eventually, loyal customers. If your website is not yet doing the heavy lifting by generating leads while you sleep, you can benefit from using inbound marketing techniques to improve your site.
Your customers are out there and are waiting to be found. All you have to do is win over their attention by offering the support they seek. Inbound marketing is the key to accomplishing this. But how exactly? Here are four ways that inbound marketing generates quality leads on your website.
1. Blog on a Regular Schedule
With a regularly updated blog, you can speak directly to your target audience through every stage of the buyer’s journey. You can create relevant content that speaks to their needs at the awareness, comprehension, and action stages of the journey to help them move toward making a purchase from your company. As you provide consistent support in this manner, your audience will start to trust your influence as a thought leader in your industry and develop a sense of loyalty to your brand.
You can naturally place keywords throughout your blog content to make a positive impact on your site’s search engine rankings as well. For each keyword you support with content, you can gain visitors in need of more information or solutions relating to that query. An example of this might be, "How to get ants out of my home?" Writing blogs that address this common keyword search will get your business discovered by consumers who are interested in your services. As your website visitor numbers go up, your content can start to work its magic by offering even further educational content infused with strong calls-to-action.
2. Use Strong Calls-to-Action
With the strategic placement of strong calls-to-action, or CTAs, you can use your content to inspire readers to take the next steps in engaging with your company. You can use CTAs to drive your target audience toward gated, premium content downloads or courses that can help further educate and engage them.
You can also include CTAs in emails and on social media by using linked text or pictures that take visitors to target landing pages. At these landing pages, readers should be able to complete the next step in acquiring their desired content by filling out a form. This helps your target audience take the first step toward buying your products or services before ever talking to your sales team.
3. Offer Premium Content
Gated premium content goes one step further than blogs in quality, comprehensiveness, and engagement. As we stated above, this type of content usually requires the completion of a form that allows you to collect a name, email, or other contact information in exchange for a download link or PDF.
You can also ask for information that will help you complete a buyer persona for your target audience. To accomplish this goal, consider asking for visitors' locations, income ranges, professions, interests, or more to gain as much information as you need to create a detailed depiction of your target audience. (Just don't bog them down too much - You want them to stick around and download your content!)
4. Promote Your Content
Although regularly updated blog content can help improve your search rankings, you can accelerate your success by directly promoting your created content. As you promote the fact that visitors can have access to your educational content, your website will begin to generate workable leads at an amazing rate.
You can promote your premium content by including links in your blogs, weekly email newsletters, and on social media. Paid banner ads can also help you drive visitors to your content and generate the leads you need. Traditional advertising methods, such as radio and magazines, can also encourage consumers to head to your website to engage with your content. As you encourage traffic to your blog or to gated landing pages, you can capture more leads and start your journey toward converting these visitors into paying customers.
Optimize Your Website and Let It Do the Marketing for You
Now that you know the ways in which inbound marketing generates quality leads on your website, you can start to use this winning formula to accelerate the growth of your business. Rely on the techniques above to get people to visit your site, read your blogs, and acquire your gated, premium content to start pushing them toward the purchase stage of the buyer’s journey. Once you dial in your strategy, your efforts will help turn your dull website into a lead-generating machine in no time flat.