We live in an increasingly connected world which means great news for business innovation, but bad news for anyone who would rather do things the same old way. If startups want to want to generate more customers, the same old way just won’t do.
The rise of the gig economy, the growth of small and boutique businesses, and the rapidly expanding online sphere have created the perfect storm for startups to thrive.
The smartest startups are using their resources and taking advantage of their less diligent competitors. Simply put, successful startups are generating more customers with inbound marketing.
Whatever Happened to Outbound, Anyway?
We’ve all been interrupted mid-meal by a ringing phone or been roused by a knock at the door right in the middle of our favorite show. It is annoying, invasive, and inconvenient.
Cold calling, door-knocking, email spam campaigns, and other types of outbound marketing ARE effective, but only to a point.
Generic content sent to generic audiences can only go so far; and sometimes, the conversion rates for these sort of tactics barely justify the time or expense.
Today’s audience is looking for a personalized experience that offers something of value — tasks accomplished with inbound marketing. Just listening to you prattle on about how great your business is not enough. Today’s audience expects to be rewarded for that time.
Think about it, interrupting someone’s dinner no way to begin a relationship.
But inbound marketing is a great way to begin a relationship and generate more customers!
How Startups Are Generating More Customers With Inbound Marketing
In order to draw attention and make their voices heard, online startups have had to do some pretty creative marketing. Inbound marketing techniques allow a startup to fine-tune their brand, their voice, and content strategy to meet the complex needs of their target audience.
In terms of generative more customers, inbound marketing offers many benefits to a startup. A successful inbound marketing campaign can be established with a small staff and low overhead.
And perhaps most importantly, customers like inbound marketing.
Why Customers Prefer Startups Who Use Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing allows brands and startups to put information about their business out into the world in an unobtrusive way.
Customers who may genuinely have a need for that product, service or information, are easily able to find it (if the content is done well, of course), and those who have no interest in the business don’t have to filter out the noise.
But you can’t just write generic content.
How Startups Can Get The Most Out Of Inbound Marketing
To generate more customers through inbound marketing, startups need to make sure their house is in order.
If you are going to be concentrating your efforts around inbound marketing and bringing traffic to your site, you need to make sure that there is something on it that will make visitors stick around. High bounce rates will not help SEO and can make it difficult for people to find you, even if they are actively searching.
Beginning with all your landing pages, take a deep dive into your content to ensure that new visitors will get the correct first impression. Keep an eye out for obvious spelling mistakes and grammar errors which is likely to turn people off.
Always ask yourself:
- What are you trying to tell visitors?
- Are you getting this message across?
Each page on your site should be optimized, making use of keywords and metadata.
Establishing a social media presence is a helpful way to use inbound marketing to generate customers. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Linkedin cannot be ignored. These platforms can help build brand awareness and authenticity while providing an opportunity for users to share and spread your carefully crafted, unique content.
However, these steps are just the beginning. For a successful inbound marketing campaign, you need substantive content.
Smart Content Generates More Customers
No one wants to waste their time. For inbound marketing to work, visitors need to be rewarded for visiting your site.
One of the most effective ways to generate this sort of traffic, and provide visitors with something of value, is through blogging. For maximum impact, it is important to blog as often as possible.
Companies who blog 16 times a month generate 3.5 times more traffic than companies who blog 4 times a month. What’s more, companies who blog 16 times a month or more generate more inbound leads than companies who blog 4 times a month.
Clearly providing more content is important, but you can’t just post any old content. You need to choose your topics carefully. Your content should speak to the intentions of your target audience and provide them something educational, entertaining, or both. You need to create content that will establish you as an authority on whatever it is you do.
Frequent, quality, blog posts can help startups generate customers by:
- Bringing traffic to the page and attracting an audience
- Providing information that establishes authority
- Showing the SEO Google bots that the website has fresh content
- Providing opportunities to use keywords that will improve search engine ranking
- Providing shareable content that can further generate new traffic
Why Startups Are Outsourcing Their Inbound Marketing
Typically speaking, startups do not have extra employees sitting around looking for something to do. Small teams, often mean using resources in very specific ways. Sometimes, startups do not have the time, or employees, to devote to regular content creation.
Developing a content strategy that works requires taking a close look at the target demographic, conducting keyword research, and determining what exactly will make a blog post attractive to both current and prospective customers.
It’s a lot of work.
But, many startups are enlisting the services of content creators like okwrite to do that heavy lifting.
More than just writing blogs, content companies can really get into the competitor and audience research to develop an inbound marketing strategy that aligns with your audience aims as well as business goals. Once the content is created and live, these companies can also help wade through the analytics to determine what is and is not working, and facilitate any necessary strategy shifts.
Content should always have a purpose, and sometimes, that means hiring an outside company to figure it all out.
Online, everyone is shouting for attention. To get noticed, startups need an effective content strategy. Providing valuable, educational, entertaining, authoritative, and unique content is the most powerful way to stand out from the crowd. Create a space where visitors will stay, build a social media presence to pique curiosity and establish authenticity, and publish high-quality content.
Whether you do this work yourself, or hire a content creation team, your inbound marketing efforts will generate customers and keep your business thriving for a long time to come.
