7 Tips to Improve Your Inbound Marketing Strategy

It’s one thing to push your products and services to the world and it’s a whole different thing to build a relationship with your audience. Every great marketing strategy should strike a balance between both, i.e. inbound marketing and outbound marketing. 

Inbound marketing utilises content in every form to provide value to an audience in the hopes of retaining them as a buyer or consumer. Simply put, you are showing the customer that your focus isn’t on selling yourself but on solving their problems. For example, if you’ve ever gotten some form of value from a brand and decided to buy from them, you have gone through their inbound marketing process.

A working inbound marketing strategy can heavily complement your traditional marketing efforts. It also helps you form a genuine and lasting relationship with your audience. If you’d like to improve your current strategy, here are some tips that may be helpful:

1. Thoroughly research your target audience
2. Build a buyer persona
3. Provide useful and original content
4. Create a long-term content marketing strategy
5. Utilise social media platforms
6. Explore guest blogging
7. Track and refine your marketing strategies often

1. Thoroughly Research Your Target Audience

Marketing is not throwing yourself into the void, hoping the right people find you. Doing this is a recipe for stagnancy and little to no visibility. You should consider your target audience before setting up an inbound marketing strategy. And if you’ve already set one up, pause on implementation and take some time to research your audience. 

For example, for us at Shadow Scribes, our target audience is other businesses struggling with low visibility and frustrated with their marketing efforts. We place them in the limelight by finding the missing keys to their strategy. 

There are many ways to thoroughly research your audience such as:

- Interviews

You can reach out to potential and existing clients to interview them. Ask questions about their purchasing habits, pain points, and favourite brands. Ensure you record their answers so you can compare them with other interviewees later. 

- Surveys

You can also conduct online surveys and share them on platforms your target audience uses. For example, if we wanted to carry out a survey, we’d mainly share it on LinkedIn to reach other businesses. 

- Competitor Research

Check out other brands in your industry. What audience are they producing content for? What kind of people interact with them? How often do these people interact with the brand? What are some issues past clients have had with them?

- Social Media Analytics

Many social media platforms offer insights into your audience. This lets you see your followers’ social media habits such as their most active times and other businesses they follow. 

Information about your target audience can help you spot weaknesses and lapses in your inbound marketing strategy. For example, you may discover that your target audience is construction workers who may not engage with very formal content. You can then refine your strategy to better accommodate them and address their pain points.

2. Build a Buyer Persona

You should create your inbound marketing strategy with a mental picture of your potential buyer in mind. If you’re struggling to visualise this potential buyer, create a buyer persona to make things easier for you. A buyer persona is a profile of a fictional buyer or consumer. 

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For example, let’s say you own a fashion store selling unique jewellery. Your ideal buyer may be a young person between 20 to 25 who is interested in having an alternative style. You can flesh out this fictional profile to include location, career, and even hobbies. Additionally, you can create multiple buyer personas for each type of customer you want to attract. 

A buyer persona helps you develop more targeted inbound marketing strategies. The more targeted your strategies are, the more effective they are. This also helps you avoid wasting resources on content that is targeted at the wrong people. You can use HubSpot’s Make My Persona Tool and have a buyer persona ready in minutes. 

3. Provide Useful and Original Content

Inbound marketing hinges on building a relationship with your audience before they become paying customers. One of the best ways to do this is by providing them useful content. It is best if this content is original so you’re not giving away free backlinks or clicks. 

You can provide original content through: 

- Free Webinars 

Webinars are a great way to pull a virtual crowd without worrying about issues such as renting a space or lighting and sound. If you promote the webinar right, you might end up with hundreds of virtual attendees who may become paying customers. 

- Research

People are always looking for data. If you can provide it (either for free or for a small fee), you will keep them returning to your content. Publishing original research can also get you free high-quality backlinks, further boosting your rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs).

- High-Quality Blog Posts

Avoid generic blog posts that don’t offer any true insight. Instead, give useful advice based on your professional expertise and experience. Additionally, ensure you optimise your blog posts for search!

- E-Books or Courses

A free e-book or in-depth course can cause your numbers to skyrocket. It is easier for people to trust you with their money when they get a glimpse of the value you offer. For example, HubSpot has cracked the game of providing free courses and e-books with HubSpot Academy. And their website gets thousands of impressions every month.

Quick Tip: Avoid sticking with only one form of content as this can limit the audience you attract. For example, strike a good balance between video and written content. You can also incorporate video elements into your written content. 

4. Create a Long-Term Content Marketing Strategy

So now you have quality and original content but you’re still running low on customers and views. This is where content marketing comes in. It should be easy for your target audience to find you. Take all that research from tip number 1 and implement it in your content marketing strategy. Create content that shows you care about your target audience’s pain points.

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A good content marketing strategy should include the marketing channels of your choice, your plans for each channel, and your goals. For example, you may choose YouTube, Instagram, and search engines to market your content. 

You then need to craft strategies for each channel. YouTube does well with long-form video content so you can use this for in-depth explanations or tutorials. Instagram is great for pictures and short-form video content such as quick tips. Search engines love long-form written content so think detailed blog posts like this one.

When setting goals for your content marketing strategy, ensure they are SMART goals. You need Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Sensitive goals. A good example of a SMART goal is wanting to increase traffic to your landing page by 15% in three months. 

5. Utilise Social Media Platforms

It is now easier than ever to build a community online thanks to social media platforms. The best part is that you can achieve this without spending a fortune on ad campaigns. However, just like with search engine optimisation (SEO), it involves some knuckle-cracking work. 

You need to be consistent to get the most out of social media. This consistency doesn’t mean posting content daily. Rather, it is establishing a sustainable frequency that your followers look forward to. For example, you can put out one post weekly on maybe Thursdays. This is sustainable for you and establishes a routine with your followers. Having a social media calendar keeps things smoothly running for you.

Additionally, you should tailor and repurpose your content for each platform. You can share the same content on multiple platforms but not in the same format. For instance, if you post a tutorial on YouTube, don’t just share the same video on Instagram or Facebook. Instead, take the time to edit the video to fit Instagram’s short-form preference and write an interesting caption. Do the same for Facebook and watch your engagement rate change. 

Lastly, don’t forget to engage with your audience. Build a rapport with them. Respond to messages and comments to further humanize your brand. Your audience will trust you with their money when they recognise your brand. 

6. Explore Guest Blogging 

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Guest blogging involves writing and publishing articles on other websites. I know it sounds counterproductive but stick with me for a second. Imagine you frequently read a website like Forbes Home and you come across an article that resonates with you. You check the writer and it’s someone you’ve never heard of before. But their work is good, it’s helpful and impactful. All of a sudden, you want to see what else this person has to offer. 

That is the power of guest blogging. It helps you harness a pre-existing community and audience to increase the efficiency of your inbound marketing strategy. It is also another great way to build quality backlinks that boost your website’s authority score and increase your ranking.

When creating a guest blogging strategy, ensure you opt for high-quality websites that have a higher domain score than yours. These websites often have thousands of readers every month and a single backlink can give you a serious SEO boost. 

7. Track and Refine Your Marketing Strategies Often

The world is always on the move and as such, algorithms are ever changing. You may be left behind if you don’t if you don’t refine your marketing strategies often. I’m not saying you need to jump on every marketing trend out there. However, your strategy should be flexible enough to accommodate certain changes without being undefined. 

Furthermore, you should track the results of your strategies such as conversion rates, bounce rates, and views and impressions. Tracking and analysing performances can help you narrow down issues and opportunities. For instance, some forms of content will do better on TikTok than on Twitter (Yes, I know it’s now called X but I refuse to call it that). This information can help you tailor your future efforts for maximum impact and results. 

A thorough analysis of your results can also help you identify opportunities to improve your inbound marketing strategy. For example, you may decide to set up an ad campaign for your free e-book if the original post is doing well. This provides an opportunity to extend your reach and catch more potential customers in your inbound fishing net. 

Conclusion

Inbound marketing is no easy feat and you can start to feel stuck after a while. This is why Shadow Scribes is here. Our tips can get you out of that rut and back in the glorious view of your target audience. By building detailed buyer personas, exploring guest blogging opportunities, and having a solid content marketing strategy, you can get your inbound marketing strategy going! It’s not easy work but it will be impactful. 

If you’d rather have someone else do all that marketing work for you, try Shadow Scribes. We are a multi-talented group of creatives who will stop at nothing to get your business the solution it needs. Our response is swift because we are practically glued to our devices; so send us a quick message today!