Inbound Marketing Strategy and Consulting
Inbound Marketing Consulting That Gets You Where You Want to Go
Inbound marketing attracts your target audience through the sharing of educational content that solves business problems. Inbound marketing builds trust and credibility. Rather than hunting down qualified prospects, the right inbound marketing strategy encourages prospects to find, trust in, and engage with you.
Start by pinpointing the best way to reach your audience. What messaging will resonate most? What properties do you want to test, and is it best to use organic or paid ad strategies? Inbound marketing is an ever-changing landscape, so be prepared to evolve your strategy early and often.
Blog Strategy and SEO
Many companies create and disseminate generic, flat content with the thought that all content is good content (“content is king!”). Other companies refuse to blog, believing that “blogs are dead!” In today’s day and age of three-second attention spans and heightened expectations, both camps couldn’t be more wrong.
Blogs and other valuable content are key to inbound marketing efforts. Well-written, SEO-optimized blog entries boost organic (“free”) traffic to your site. Good SEO enables you to beat out the competition in search results and then rewards those who find you with information that piques their curiosity, answers their pressing questions, and inspires them to learn more.
Content Marketing
White papers, e-books, case studies, assets, e-newsletters, published articles, press releases … so many opportunities to build your audience and reinforce your credibility. Are you demonstrating thought leadership and sharing relevant, timely insights? Helping prospective clients make critical decisions that can dramatically improve their business? Offering high-value assets that address their pain points and help them understand how to solve important problems?
I can help you decide what to do and show you how to do it.
Social Media Strategy
“Free” social media advertising should align with paid ads and other marketing avenues. Prospects who engage with social media ads only to discover an outdated social media page get confused. And well-developed social media pages with tons of thought leadership content? Unless your organic marketing is spot on or you use ads, prospects have trouble finding those pages at all.
Let’s say you want to promote your company on LinkedIn and Facebook. Have you validated that the platforms’ respective audiences and reach meet your business needs? How often should you post on Facebook? How about on LinkedIn? Do you want to try LinkedIn text ads, sponsored content, or sponsored InMail emails? Do you know how to gain 1,000+ followers on LinkedIn or 10,000+ followers on Facebook? What’s the best way to get employees to cross-post content to expand your reach?
A social media plan is part of a much larger marketing plan. Audit, strategy, content calendar development, and campaign analysis processes should precede social media campaign execution.
Webinar Strategy and Design
Professionally scripted webinars enable prospective customers to receive information that they can use to improve business operations and processes. At the same time, the ideas you share can enhance your credibility as a trusted resource – so long as you focus on the customer’s needs vs. tooting your own horn.
And after the webinar, be sure to take advantage of every opportunity to keep your company’s value front and center by connecting with prospective customers on social media, continually providing value through social media posts, and offering a professionally designed webinar deck.
Marketing Agency Vetting
Many growing businesses reach a point where they’re ready to choose a marketing agency. They do preliminary research and discover they have thousands of options, many of them not cheap. They get recommendations, meet with a couple agencies, and pick their favorite — often without sufficient agency vetting. Some of them end up paying exorbitant fees for months or years on end with little to show for it.
If your business is ready for an agency, you should hire an agency. The risk, of course, is that you might back the wrong horse. When it comes to agencies, I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the just plain horrifying. Asking me to vet your agency and review their contract terms may well be the smartest business decision you make all year.
Why Hire Me as Your Inbound Marketing Consultant?
The most common inbound marketing “strategy” is to throw random darts in the hopes that some stick. You can try to figure out your inbound marketing strategy on your own, or you can make a strategic inbound marketing investment and hire me. The best part? I’ll help you make smarter decisions, spend your limited marketing dollars more wisely, and even upskill your staff. Win-win-win.
