Many business owners and executives are using elements of inbound marketing, but not getting the increases in web traffic and leads they were hoping for.  They hire an SEO agency to optimize their sites for search engines, but don’t get the traffic they were expecting.  Or they start blogging and get the same result – negligible increases in traffic and leads.

The reason that these business owners and executives aren’t getting a return on their investment is because successful inbound marketing requires a coordinated approach that optimizes all of the inter-related elements.  I would suggest that you’re wasting your time and money if you’re not conducting a coordinated campaign.

Keywords and SEO

Keywords phrases are the 3 to 5 word phrases that customers use to describe your business.  The first element of a coordinated inbound marketing program is to develop a list of keyword phrases that potential customers use when they look for your products and services on the internet.  If you’re not using targeted keyword phrases in your website titles and content, how can you expect buyers to find you?  If you’re not using these keyword phrases in the titles and content of your blog, how can you expect to increase your website traffic and leads?

Blogging and Content Offers

Blogging is a great way to show search engines that you’re producing great content for people that would potentially use your products and services and updating it frequently.   Good content that is updated frequently is the best way to get on the first page of Google.  But if you’re not using keyword phrases in your blog titles and content, how can you expect people searching for your products and services to find you?  The same goes for your eBooks and whitepapers – make sure your letting the search engines (and the people that use them) know what your content is about.

If you’re blogging and don’t include call to action buttons that link to landing pages with your content offers, how do you expect to generate leads that you can nurture with your excellent content?  Remember the ultimate purpose of your blog – you’re blogging because you want people to learn more about your business and eventually buy your products and services.

Social Media

We’ve all heard the statistics about the prevalence of social media and how businesses are using it to generate leads and promote their brands.  For example, 500 million people log into Facebook every day.  Many businesses create social media accounts and occasionally send out a broadcast.  But if you’re using social media and not promoting your blog and content offers, how can you expect to generate leads?  You don’t want to use social media only as a megaphone to sell your products and services, but you do want to occasionally broadcast sales messages and promote your blogs as you monitor your brand and position yourself as a trusted advisor. 

Pulling it All Together

The formula for inbound marketing success is relatively straight-forward:

1.  Optimize your site using keyword phrases that buyers use to describe what you do

2. Create content (blogs, eBooks, whitepapers, videos, etc.) based around the keyword phrases that you are targeting. 

3. Include calls-to-action on your blog and website that link to landing pages where people can download relevant, educational content in return for completing a form that collects their contact information

4. Use social media to promote your content and provide links to other people’s content that your audience finds useful

5. Continue to promote educational content that follows your potential buyers as they progress through their buying process using e-mail marketing and lead nurturing

6. Use metrics to measure all of your efforts and create a process for continual improvement

While the formula is relatively straight-forward, the execution requires a coordinated daily effort.  If you’re not doing all of these things in coordination, you won’t get the results that you’re expecting.

Those businesses that don’t have the resources to conduct a coordinated campaign should consider outsourcing the management of their campaign to an inbound marketing consultant that can produce the desired results.  A coordinated campaign can be the difference between a program that pays for itself many times over and one that doesn't produce results.