In the world of marketing, we categorize core marketing efforts two ways: Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing.   Outbound marketing is marketing to a broad range of people who may or may not be interested in your product or service (business) at the moment when your advertisement reaches them.  Examples include: Tv Commercials, Radio Ads, Newspaper, Billboards, Flyers, Mailers etc.  Inbound Marketing however is advertising to a targeted group of people who are interested in your product or service at the very moment when they see your advertisement. Examples of inbound marketing strategies include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per Click Advertisements (PPC) and Retargeting (RET).   In order to have a complete inbound marketing strategy, you must be targeting both Organic Natural Listing and Top Placement Paid advertisements.  In a recent article, written by our CO-Founder JB Kellogg, he discusses the Best Inbound Marketing Strategy and the time that it takes to implement and asses your programs efforts

What is Inbound Marketing?

The question that we hear most often is – What is Inbound Marketing? At its core it is very simple. Rather than seeking out customers and marketing to a broad range of people who may or may not be interested in your product service; what if you could only show your ad to people that are specifically interested in your types of products or services?

Would you see a greater return on your marketing investment, less wasted advertising spend and higher conversions if you only targeted customers that were in the Buy cycle? The answer is yes!

• On the front end of your inbound marketing campaign, you must choose highly relevant and searched Keywords to optimize your website for high organic natural ranking; and target those same or similar keywords through Paid advertisements.  Over time this ensures that you are receiving maximum exposure for your chosen keywords and gets you in front of buyers at an extremely high rate.  We will discuss keyword selection in a later post.
•  On the Backend of your inbound marketing campaign, you must capture and convert that targeted traffic into new or potentially new business (Lead generation for example); this is done by optimizing your conversion funnel. Essentially your website must constantly be tweaked and refined in order to convert the maximum amount of inbound, targeted traffic.   You must also, set up an effective Retargeting campaign because not every person that lands on your website is going to convert on the first visit (Learn more about Retargeting)

The issues that most companies currently face, when it comes to using the internet in order to grow their business, is that they think of internet marketing in the wrong context.   There is a complete misunderstanding as to WHY they want to be on page #1, why they need SEO and why they need Paid advertisement.  Unfortunately SEO Firms, PPC Firms and most companies try to treat internet marketing like, old school outbound marketing (i.e. tv, radio, flyers).  Companies think that more traffic and higher ranking is the going to help them grow their business.  In actuality this only leads to more wasted money, effort and time.  Traffic and ranking are not the answer to a successful inbound marketing campaign. Traffic and ranking are leading indicators that what you are doing with your campaign is working!  If the goal is to get on page and drive traffic, then you are missing the boat.  More is not necessarily better!  You should only be focused on more qualified buyers and more CONVERSIONS!!!  Therefore, you must consider “WHY”.  Why is traffic and ranking important?  The answers is, traffic and ranking are important in order to drive conversions.  But, the only way to achieve the maximal amount of Conversions and get the highest return on your investment is if you are targeting the right kind of Keywords.  It’s not about the most competitive keywords or the keywords with most amount of search.

Here is an example to explain:

If you were a company that sold shoes and you were marketing to the keyword “shoes”, the question still remains – what kind of shoe? If a web user were to type in this search term, and your advertisement were to appear, it would most likely get clicked on; however, they will most likely NOT buy any shoes from you.   Why? Because they do not know what kind of shoe they are looking for (they are still researching) and as the advertiser you do not know what type of shoe that they are looking for; therefore how do you target them and how do you give them what they are looking for?   The answer is, you don’t!

When a user lands on your website, you have 2.5 seconds to capture their attention.  The key is to capture that same web user when they are further along in the buying cycle; when they know exactly what type of shoe they want.  What if after an hour of research that same web user decide that they are looking for “black leather wingtip dress shoes”; and this is a product that you sell?  What if you created a targeted ad, speaking specifically to that product and sending them directly to your black leather wingtip dress shoes category page on your website?   Do you think that they are more likely to take action?  The answer is yes!

The take away is to remember WHY you are trying to rank organically and run paid advertisement ads.  The answer is not to be visible for every single search under the sun.  You only want to be visible for the most targeted keywords, targeting web users who know what they are looking for and who are ready to buy the products or services that you sell.  As an inbound marketing agency we will create, implement, manage and optimize your campaign in order to help you reach your goals and grow your business.   Learn more about our 360 degree approach to successful inbound marketing.