Whether youre a small company trying to expand your business or a big company trying to enter a new market, its important to fill the top of your funnel with prospects and engage in meaningful interactions with them. The traditional approach to inbound revenue generation consists of three steps:
The primary tactics used to generate website traffic were Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. Small business found it difficult to compete with larger firms with more marketing resources for those first few spots on the Google results page. The good news for small businesses is that Googles latest search algorithms place less emphasis on technical SEO tactics like page optimization and link-building and are favoring websites that create relevant content that is frequently updated and shared and liked on social media channels. Here are some tactics to grow your social database.
Viral marketing is when your content or product is widely shared on social media channels think of the YouTube video that everyone is watching. Although easier said than done, you should seek out opportunities to have others spread your message for you. Reach out to thought leaders in your industry and see if they will promote your content. Get your blog article published in a trade journal and share it through your social media channels. The best way to go viral for a small business is to create good content.
With Googles new ranking algorithm, its important to create as much good content for your audience as possible. The best way to do this is through blogging companies that blog get 55% more website traffic and 79% more twitter followers than those that dont. Blog about things that are important to the audience youre trying to reach. For example, the top ten questions your prospects and customers ask can be the basis for ten blog articles. If theyre well-written and solve prospect and customer problems, your audience will share them through their social media channels.
To keep your content engine rolling, create an editorial calendar and produce:
Make sure you include targeted calls-to-action on all of your content and social media sharing buttons. Creating good content takes a lot of effort, but the payoff in terms of increased web traffic and leads justifies the effort.
In order to build relationships, you need to meet your prospects where they live. Accessing social media content on mobile devices is becoming more popular every day. In order to connect with your prospects, you need to get into their social media feeds. Grenney suggested the following tactics for increasing social media followers:
You also need to assign someone in your company to monitor your brand mentions on social media daily. Thank people who praise you and help people who are having customer service issues.
LinkedIn and Twitter profiles are a great way to research prospects early on and to customize your approach to that prospect. More and more prospects are open to conversations through their social media channels if someone downloads an eBook, consider sending them a Tweet asking them if they have any questions.
If possible, you should integrate social media data into your CRM system for a 360-degree view for your sales team. Most CRM and marketing automation software incorporates social media data into prospect and lead records.
Lastly, you should track social media performance in your closed-loop analytics to determine which social media platforms work best and which have room for improvement.
In summary, social and inbound marketing tactics are evolving to reflect how consumers use the internet. Smart businesses are adjusting their tactics constantly to maximize the return on their social and inbound marketing investment.