What company wouldn't love to scrap its marketing budget and avoid paid advertising?
While that may not be completely possible, you can utilize inbound marketing to lower your marketing budget.
New to Inbound Marketing?
There are some differences between inbound and outbound marketing.
- Two-way conversation
- Focus is on value
- Brings customers to you
- Diverse customers
With inbound marketing, the conversation with your customers is a two-way street. Outbound marketing communication is typically only one way - sending information to customers with no feedback. Inbound marketing focuses on building relationships with your customers and delivering value, while outbound focuses more on generating leads.
When you use an inbound marketing tool, customers come directly to you. With outbound marketing, you generally target your audience with your information. You will notice more diverse customers with inbound marketing - because groups change and grow. Outbound customers are often targeted to a specific demographic.
Understand How To Use The Right Tools
There are many powerful inbound marketing tools - at little to no cost.
- Website Analytics
- Blogging
- SEO - Changes to how it is used
- Webinars & YouTube
Gauge How Your Audience Engages With Your Content
Analyzing your marketing success is an important part of any marketing plan. You need to be able to measure the results of marketing campaigns and methods.
A few of the questions that need to be answered when analyzing marketing campaigns:
- How did people find you?
- Which campaign generated the most sales?
- Are your campaigns delivering revenue?
There are many analytic services and software packages that will help you understand your company's performance data. They will give you valuable insight on which strategy you should focus more of your time and energy on.
Blogging
Why blog? Do you update them regularly? Most websites are fairly stationary. Blogging is a page on your website that gets updated on a regular basis, and it's an amazing way to increase online traffic. It is an opportunity to attract new customers with your services and key phrases. Not only does your current blog quietly work for you behind the scenes, but your past blogs will continue to do their jobs long after you have forgotten about them!
SEO & Long-tail Keywords
The way keywords have been used is changing, and search queries are becoming longer. In the beginning, a search used a keyword component exactly as it appeared on the web. Due to variables such as new technology, voice-based searches, and smaller devices, people are searching more by phrases than keywords. Developers are trying to meet this need by creating more sophisticated engines to keep up with the needs of users.
Webinars and YouTube
Developing a webinar or posting a YouTube video can bring new customers into your business as well as help you retain your current client base. Whatever your topic, make sure your audience receives takeaways. A YouTube video is a great way to show a procedure or explain how a process is completed. Keep it interesting with up-to-date topics - informative, but no high-pressure sales, and don't be too serious!
Avoid paying for advertising when you don't have to! If you are struggling to keep your marketing dollars in check - check out these inbound marketing tools. They may be just what you need to optimize your online traffic while maintaining your marketing budget. 