This is the first blog in a series of four covering the importance of the different aspects of inbound and outbound marketing.  There are many different components to the two strategies, we will outline why it is imperative that you implement each of these components to ensure a successful marketing campaign.

SEO: Search engine optimization is strategic in getting found through Google and other search engines.  Consumers these days are relying even more on online reviews to make their purchases.  Having a highly optimized site that touches on all of the keys that these search engine algorithms search for is of the utmost importance. 

Keywords:  Keywords that identify the objectives of each of your website pages.

Body Content:  The content on each page should contain a minimum of 300 words and contain the main keyword(s) that identify the pages significance. 

Internal Links:  It is a must to make your website easy to navigate and have links displayed on each page that are relevant to the pages overall content. 

Back Links:  Having other sites that link to your website pages shows Google your content is trustworthy and supported by other legitimate websites. 

Social Media:  Search engines comb through the different social platforms for links to your website and content offers. 

Titles and Headers:  Ensure that your titles and headers contain keywords that show the relevance of each of your website pages. 

Blog:  Blogging is the number one way to drive traffic to your website.  Each blog creates another page for search engines to identify, which increases your SEO.  Blogging is what can set you apart as an industry leader and show your expertise in your field.  Statistics have shown that companies that blog 16 times a month will drive 3.5 times the traffic to their sites as opposed to companies that blog between 0-4 times per month.  That increased traffic is what will create more leads for your sales people.  Depending on the blog that your potential customer is clicking on, it also helps to identify their pain points and where they are in the buyer’s journey.  This allows you to create content offers that are tailored to that individual and lets you know when it is time to reach out to them.  Your company blog will be the most widely viewed piece of content that your company puts out.  You need to ensure the content you are writing targets your specific buyer personas.  Furthermore, it is important to write content that is geared towards prospects in each stage of your sales funnel.  Keeping your content educational rather than self promoting is important in gaining subscribers and drawing in customers. 

Social Sharing:  Social media is where you increase the reach of your company and promote your content.  You will need to identify the social channels that your target customers frequent in order to maximize the potential of your content offers.  Promoting your blogs through social channels will drive prospects to your website, which in turn will create more leads.  It is important that you stick with the 80/20 rule when publishing content to your social channels.  Ensuring that you post relevant industry articles more often than your own content will show that you are on the cutting edge of your field and make it so your pages do not appear as a billboard for your company.  Social sharing can also help to cultivate relationships with your prospects as you will have one on one access to them through the social channel of their choice.  Social media is also a great way to nurture leads for those businesses that have a longer sales cycle as you will be able to keep in touch and monitor where they are in the funnel based on conversations, comments and likes. 

Stayed tuned for the next in this series:

Importance of Teleprospecting, Email Workflows and Cold Calling: Essentials of Inbound & Outbound Marketing Part 2