Brands engaged in the digital marketing space often hire an inbound marketing agency to work on blogs, podcasts, videos, eBooks, website optimization, social media marketing, and other forms of content marketing to expand their digital marketing footprint.  Work on an inbound marketing strategy with your agency to ramp up your lead generation and sales conversions. For those of you that are new to inbound marketing, here are 5 rules that everyone needs to live by:

1. Attract traffic and win it over

It’s good to earn your way in, instead of begging or bugging your way in. Use knowledge-based techniques and give detailed information about the features and benefits of your products/services. Educate prospects through blog posts, eBooks, Webinars etc. and explain why you are different than the others. Get found at Social sites such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare and then convert visitors into leads.

2. Build relationships with lead nurturing to convert visitors to leads

When users sign up for eBooks and Webinars, you will have their email addresses which will help create relationships with your audience. This is important if you want to get close to prospects, so they can build a level of comfort with your company. Trust is difficult to gain in a day, so use inbound marketing methods and work constantly to win their trust.

Progressive email nurturing is an excellent way to build a relationship with your prospective customer over time. Use the data you’ve collected about your customers such as pages they’ve viewed, eBooks they have downloaded, or profile information (e.g. job title, company size, etc) to tailor email content to their unique needs. Use a marketing automation platforms such as Hubspot, Eloqua, or Marketo to create properly segmented emails with dynamic content.

3. Convert leads to sales

Once you have qualified & nurtured leads, it is time to offer some discounts to convert the leads into sales. Now that the potential customer has a higher level of awareness about your product/brand, they are more likely to buy when you create a sense of urgency through a discount or incentive. The relationship building process gives prospects ample time to gain better awareness, and thus makes conversion easier. Inbound marketing services use a structured informational path to create awareness and increase interest.

4. Turn customers into repeat, higher margin customers

Once a prospect buys from you, keep them engaged with future business plans and upcoming specials through blog post, newsletters, and customer lead nurturing programs. Focus on industry news and activities, and use content that will make you stand out of a million. Your customers’ business communities will be easy to convert if they vouch for you as a reliable source.

5. Analyze for continuous improvement in inbound marketing

When you have a large client database, it’s time to look for new ways to improve your market share. When your content is crisp, and your strategy is bringing results, review your sources of traffic through your analytics program (Google Analytics, Site Catalyst, Hubspot, etc) and see where you need improvement.

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