Category: Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing 101: Crafting Quality Content that Attracts Visitors

For many companies, creating content for their websites and blogs can appear to be the most difficult and time-consuming part of developing an inbound marketing campaign. But creating quality content is really fairly simple: keep your audience in mind.

Target your audience.

Who is your key audience? What topics are they interested in? How much time do they have to read your content? Are they missing key information they need to make decisions? Tailor your content for your audience, and you’ll begin to see an uptick in visitors to your site. Not only that, you’ll know that these are visitors who are precisely the prospective customers you’re honing in on.

Engage, engage, engage.

Make your content pop by throwing in a bit of humor in every paragraph. Not exactly a comedian? Tell anecdotes that will draw the reader in. Make every sentence relatable, because there’s another human being reading your work.

Zoom in on the personalities and lived experiences of your audience.

What are the trends that your audience is attracted to? What do they read besides your site? What did they do last Saturday afternoon? Knowing a few key facts about your audience will help you to speak about their experiences.

Get to the point.

Do not spend three paragraphs introducing your key point. State it up front. Many web visitors read the first few sentences of a blog post, and then skim the rest. Make your intro short and noteworthy, and take care to ensure that the body of your content is easy to read.

Establish trust.

Blog often. Post on social media several times each week. Become a presence your readers rely on and begin to trust for entertaining content and useful information, and they’ll begin to head to your site without prompting.

Speak with your web design firm about your upcoming inbound marketing campaign, and find out what their content creation strategy is. Collaborate with them by talking about who your audience is, and you’ll be well on your way to coming up with engaging, dynamic content together.

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Inbound Marketing 101: Landing pages that convert visitors into leads

Landing page brochure

If you’re contemplating an inbound marketing campaign for your business, you’re thinking about conversion. Social media followers, website visitors, and newsletter recipients all have something in common: they represent opportunities for you to convert interested and engaged parties into leads for your business. Regardless of which channel brings a visitor to your site, you must greet that visitor with an effective landing page. Something that is designed to convert him or her into a lead.

Your call–to-action must be front and center.

A call-to-action is content on your landing page which directs your users to take a concrete action. Such as downloading a free guide or brochure, signing up for a free consultation or trial. Or simply filling out a form with their contact information in order to receive a newsletter or other materials. Make sure this call-to-action is brief, straight to the point, and action-oriented. Design your page so that the call-to-action is easy to read and draws in the eye. If your visitors engage with one element on your page, you want it to be this call-to-action.

Make an offer that’s hard to resist.

What can you offer your potential customers that will provide them with real value? If your users are coming to your site to research your industry, offer them a white paper detailing information they will need to make a decision about a future purchase. If they are interested in your services, but aren’t sure they are ready to commit, offer a free trial. If they are nearly ready to make a purchase, offer a consultation that will answer any lingering questions. An offer that your customer is ready to take, will convert users to leads, and maybe even into customers.

Keep the page simple.

You want to draw attention to one thing and one thing only, and that is your actionable content. Too many pop-ups, side bars, excess information, or jarring graphics will block the path you want your users to take. Talk with your designer about keeping this page clean of distractions. This will make it easy for your potential customers to find exactly what you want them to find.

Your inbound marketing plan’s success depends on the landing page’s ability to communicate your offer’s value and engage your users in order to get them to take action. Keep these three tenets in mind when you speak with your designer about making this page a central part of your strategy.

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Inbound Marketing 101: Creating Calls-to-Action that Inspire

While you may likely have a blog on your website, and you may use social media to reach out to customers, many businesses are unfamiliar with the nuts and bolts of inbound marketing. One of the key components of an inbound marketing campaign is the call-to-action.

What is a call-to-action?

A call-to-action links your website’s visitors from content on your website to a landing page which allows users to take an action, such as filling out a form with contact info, or downloading a valuable offer, such as a brochure, a free trial or consultation, or an informational guide. The call-to-action is a jumping-off point. It’s an opportunity for you to invite users to engage with your company on another level, by giving or receiving information.

Why should you incorporate a call-to-action on your site?

First, a call-to-action can be useful in generating leads. Placing a call-to-action on your blog can allow you to reach a large number of users who are interested in reading a post or two, but have not yet converted into interested, prospective customers. Second, calls-to-action can encourage active leads to become actual customers. By offering them a trial or a consultation, or by placing a call-to-action on a product page. Finally by encouraging leads to fill out information that will allow a salesperson to contact them.

What are the components of a great call-to-action?

Easy-to-read. Visually stunning. Short and sweet. Located in a conspicuous place on your page. Clear and action-oriented. A call-to-action should be impossible for your users to miss. It must inspire them to act immediately in order to engage more deeply with your company’s products and services.

If you’ve been considering an inbound marketing campaign, speak with your web design firm about creating blog posts and landing pages that incorporate a call-to-action that links to something of value for your customers. Whether it’s a consultation with your sales team, a guide to your products and services, or a free trial. Calls-to-action are a simple way to attract leads and nurture them until your web visitors become active customers.

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Inbound Marketing 101: Establishing your buyer personas

As you begin to construct an inbound marketing strategy. Keep your audience in mind and generate a number of buyer personas. This will allow you to envision your target customers as you produce valuable content for them.

Buyer personas are fictional representations of the real-life customers you are targeting.

If you work in staffing or recruiting, you may want to reach out to job-seekers. Companies who are hiring. Visualizing these ideal members of your target audience will help you envision their needs, values, and even their preferred way of viewing and using content. It will ultimately aid you in building content, messaging, and even products and services, that appeal to those personas.

How can you build a variety of buyer personas to envision as you write blog posts, post social media updates, and create content offers?

First, envision a few broad categories of users.

In the case of a staffing firm, these broad categories may be job-seekers and companies who are looking to hire.

Now, break these groups down further.

Under the category of job-seekers.

You might envision recent college graduates, people making a career change, or employed professionals with expertise that makes them in-demand.

Under the category of hiring companies.

You might have growing start-ups, large companies who may be looking for a different staffing firm, and companies which use many temporary and contract employees.

Now that you have six well-defined buyer personas, think about what defines them.

  • Where do they live?
  • What are their interests?
  • What is their education level?
  • Are their certain websites or social media platforms they use more frequently than others?
  • What would their reason be for clicking on your blog post?
  • Why would they be interested in the products and services you have to offer?


Once you’ve answered these questions, build a short bio for each buyer persona. Now you’re ready to start crafting content that will specifically target users by appealing to them as human beings.

When writing a blog post, envision buyers who might be interested in that post, write it with them in mind. You’ll find that your content becomes more personalized and tailored, and that communications with your potential customers become more effective.

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Inbound Marketing 101: What is a Content Offer and How Can It Move Potential Customers Through the Sales Funnel?

A content offer is the backbone of your inbound marketing plan. Whether it’s a nuanced infographic, loaded with statistics, a white paper introducing new and informative content, or a brochure detailing what separates your products from the rest, the content offer will present added value to your potential customers, regardless of where they are placed in the sales funnel.

What is the sales funnel? It’s the trajectory your potential customers take as they consider a purchasing decision. Their place in the funnel determines how you will target them with your content offer.

TOFU (Top of the Funnel):

These customers are in problem-solving mode, but they haven’t necessarily decided that a purchase is the solution to their problem. They are simply seeking information, and may be most receptive to your content offer if first introduced with a short and informative blog post. The post should deliver some information, but promises more crucial information as a part of the longer content offer.

MOFU (Middle of the Funnel):

Customers in the middle of the funnel have determined that their solution may be a purchase of services or products similar to yours, and need a substantial offer of information in order to educate them about their potential purchase. This is where your content offer comes in. Targeting these customers with calls to action that will lead them to download your content is a sure way to lead them to the next level of the funnel.

BOFU (Bottom of the Funnel):

These customers are ready to make a purchase. They may be considering your products and services and weighing them against your competitors. Simply inviting them to make a purchase isn’t sufficient. Combining an invitation with a statement reiterating the value highlighted in your content offer is a great way to get these customers to revisit what they’ve learned about your company and take the next steps.

Learn more about how writing a valuable content offer, and the accompanying blog posts, calls to action, and social media marketing, will take your potential customers and move them through the funnel with ease. Your inbound marketing agency can guide you through this crucial piece of marketing strategy.

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Inbound Marketing: What is It? And How Can It Generate New Business for You?

Maybe you’ve heard the term discussed at conferences, mentioned in blog posts, or brought up by sales and marketing professionals. Many business owners are aware that inbound marketing is now the gold standard in new business development, but have yet to discover what it truly means and what it can do for their company.

Inbound marketing is a model which puts you, the business owner, in the driver’s seat. When generating high quality online content, you will attract new visitors to your website, and convert those visitors into customers. You’ll find yourself in the powerful position of learning about your customer base. By creating content that you know will appeal to your target audience. You’ll watch new customers come back to your site, and your business, again and again.

The First Step

In any inbound marketing campaign is thinking about the demographics and interests of the customers you want to attract. Then, generate interactions with those customers by publishing blog posts that are relevant to their interests. Engage with them on social media. Optimize your website so that it becomes a destination for your customers, and incorporating SEO into your web strategy.

The Second Step

Turn visitors to your website into real leads by gathering their contact information. Make it worthwhile for visitors to share their information with you by offering them content in exchange. Whitepapers, ebooks, and webinars are just a few of the informative and engaging products you can offer in order to capture your visitors’ info.

The Fhird Step

You’ll want to take is to use your leads’ information to turn them into customers. Using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, you can make sure that you keep track of key info about your leads that will allow you to tailor your marketing approach to them, using emailed content that is useful to them and underscores just how productive your potential business relationship could be.

The Fourth Step

Ensure that your customers continue to feel valued and understood, even after they’ve purchased your products or services. Continue to present them with content that speaks to them, and engage with them online in a way that reminds them of the value of your relationship with them.

An inbound marketing campaign might seem like quite the undertaking, but an agency with expertise in inbound marketing can help you to take on this challenge and reap the rewards.  If you’re interested to see how Inbound Marketing can grow you business, contact us for a free consultation.

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What is Marketing Automation?

Inbound marketing is more prevalent than ever.

Customers are over traditional marketing efforts such as television advertisements, spam-like email blasts, and direct mail. Hounding people with useless information is almost a sure-fire way to send potential leads out the door.

Inbound marketing has proven to be a helpful and adaptable solution.

What gets tricky is trying to micromanage and collaborate all of these channels and platforms as one campaign.

This is where marketing automation can be a real time and money saver. Marketing automation, in a nutshell, is a ‘one-stop’ location for all of your inbound marketing materials. These services allows companies to combine newsletters, social media posts, blog posts, and more into one central program where marketers can prioritize and execute their efforts in a much more efficient manner.

As noted above, the buying process can be very delicate. With inbound marketing, marketers are encouraged to nurture their leads by providing worthwhile information that is tailored to individuals- not a mass audience.

There are countless ways this can be carried out. For example, say you place a call-to-action on your web page, such as downloading an informative whitepage. In order to download the free whitepage, website visitors must provide their contact information, such as an email address and first and last name. After they provide this information through an online form, marketers can reach out to these prospects and further determine if these people are real leads or not. After downloading, a ‘Thank You’ email can be sent out or perhaps, an invite to download a case study containing information that is related to the whitepage.

A person who simply opened the ‘Thank You’ email should not receive the same information as the person who opened the email and then took further action, such as downloading the case study. Not downloading the second link does not necessarily disqualify someone as a potential lead; it suggests they are at a different stage of their buying process. Both parties should be contacted- in a timely, appropriate manner.

With marketing automation, these prospects can be easily managed and condensed into smaller groups allowing your sales and marketing team to reach out at appropriate times for the buyer. Both groups appreciate the more personalization from your company.

With hundreds of marketing automation services, it can be difficult to pinpoint which best matches your company’s needs. Determine what your company is looking for, but also keep in mind what you may be open to. Not all services are exactly alike- some offer the basics while others are much more elaborate. Also, be certain that a knowledgeable support team is offered. These programs can be a little overwhelming so having the right personnel to guide you through this transition is key.

While marketing automation may seem challenging, these services are proven to be highly successful. Mango Bay Internet can help design and automate an inbound marketing campaign that will work for you. To receive more information, visit our site here or call (216) 335-9255.  

Also, click here for more tips on how to increase traffic, leads, and sales from your website.

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