If you want to be a successful business in the Internet Age, you need to use the most effective inbound marketing strategies. Quite simply, the difference between inbound marketing vs outbound marketing is this: inbound marketing strategies focus on producing content that draws readers and customers in, without ever really having to reach out. This is why inbound marketing is often called content marketing.
To define content marketing’s success is really quite easy. According to Inbound Writer, 63% of web users say they are more likely to make a purchase after reading a company’s blog than they are after reading a magazine article. That being the case, it’s not too difficult to see why 58% of U.S. companies plan to pump more money into sharpening their content marketing strategies this year.
If you’re one of the many looking to make your business more competitive by fine-tuning your content marketing strategies, here are three tips you can implement, without spending a dime.
Three Simple Ideas for Transforming Your Content Marketing Strategies
- Talk to Your Readers
- Create and Stick to a Content Schedule
- Avoid Marketing Language and Rhetoric
For Forbes, there is nothing more important to a successful content marketing campaign than making your readers feel you’re talking right to them. Of course, to do this, you’ll need to know exactly who your customers are — what they want, what they need. Once you know that, you can craft content that speaks to them as people, and that, as any marketer worth their salt can tell you, will have a profound effect on your sales.
Web surfers love a blog that is updated regularly, which is why Search Engine Watch places so much importance on developing a content delivery schedule. Once a month, sit down with a calendar. You don’t need to plan a piece of content for everyday — that is, of course, unless you’re using social media — but you should plan to post regularly. Following this schedule, you can write blogs and prep other kinds of content ahead of time, ensuring you deliver what your customers want, when they want it.
Consumers are smarter now than they’ve ever been. They can spot self-aggrandizing and marketing rhetoric from a mile away. That’s why Entrepreneur suggests you cut out that kind of garbage in your content marketing and instead focus on acting like a regular person. Consumers want that human connection, and there is no way you’re going to give it to them if you keep trying to give yourself props every two sentences.
How have you fine-tuned your content marketing playbook for success? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
