INBOUND MARKETING #REPUTATION

How Do Marketing Without Risking His Reputation

TABLE OF CONTENTS

What is Inbound Marketing? 3 Why choose inbound marketing? 3 Inbound marketing in four steps 4

Creating an Attraction 5 Define the target market 5 Blogging 5 Search Engine Optimization 6 Website 6

Convert them 8 Make use of forms 8 Involve the visitors in the sales cycle 9 Manage the contact list 9

Close the sale 11 Improve relationships with customers 11 Email them 11 Automate the marketing process 12

Bring out the loyalty 14 Take surveys 14 Modified CTAs 15 Some more quality content 15 Keep track of your customers 16

Latest trends regarding inbound marketing 18 Giving power to content 18 Integrate SEO with social media 18 Cookies and ads 19 Optimization for smartphones and tablets 19

Conclusion 20

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WHAT IS INBOUND MARKETING?

Inbound marketing basically refers to those marketing activities that encourage people, visitors or potential customers to come towards the business. Usually, marketing works in a very generic way, and the first step of marketing is taken when the marketer reaches out to the potential customers. Through inbound marketing, a business or a venture can get the attention of the customers automatically and be discovered conveniently. This can only be done if the business creates content that is interesting enough to attract people and convert them into customers.

Why choose inbound marketing?

The main aim of inbound marketing is to convert strangers into customers, and in later stages of inbound marketing, these same customers will further convert into promoters of your business, which means that you will eventually have access to free marketing and advertising.

Since at this stage you do not really know how inbound marketing works, it is important to mention that the methods of inbound marketing were not discovered until 2006. This way of marketing was discovered only a decade ago, and many marketers and new startups along with huge businesses realized that this is actually a very effective way of marketing. Moreover, inbound marketing looked really promising especially for those businesses that were operating online.

The opposite of inbound marketing is outbound marketing, and in the past, this kind of marketing was not proving to be cost effective. The norms of buying ads along with lists of emails of the leads ended up creating huge expenses for businesses without having any fruitful outcome. Due to this reason there were many businessmen who were willing to explore inbound marketing where focus was only supposed to be on the quality of content which had the potential to create an attraction.

In its true essence, inbound marketing aims to naturally pull the customers towards a business or a product, not with the help of loud advertisements, but through the realization that a person genuinely requires a product or a service that is offered by the business. This can only be done if you provide content that is interesting, and as soon as you start publishing content that is more and more in line with the interests of your target market, you will eventually be successful in bringing inbound traffic to your website and it will be up to your products to convert this traffic into loyal customers.

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Inbound marketing in four steps

There are essentially four steps to conducting inbound marketing successfully. The first step is obviously to create an attraction so that you can bring in some visitors, after which you have to make an attempt to convert those visitors into potential customers. At this stage, a visitor has made up his or her mind to shop with you, and you have to be ready to close the sale. Once the sale has been successful, your job has not ended. You have to keep working to make sure that you further convert that customer into a loyal customer so that he shops with you in the future as well, and also promotes others to shop with you.

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CREATING AN ATTRACTION Right now these four steps might sound very vague to you, but all these steps are explained in detail below.

The purpose of creating an attraction is to bring traffic inflow to your website. At this stage, you must take care of inbound marketing because the aim is not to bring any kind of traffic, it has to be relevant and right. If you end up creating attraction with women, but all you are offering is products for men, then you would not be able to convert those visitors into customers, or happy customers for that matter. It is important to define ‘Relevant traffic’ at this stage, and it consists of those people whom you think are the ideal customers for your business.

Define the target market

So the first step of creating attraction among the people is to define the target market so that you can effectively filter out those people who would not shop with you at any given time. In order to come up with a target market, you first have to think, “What kind of people will gain from the products or services that I am offering?” This is not a very difficult question to answer since the products and services that you are willing to offer will be relevant to a specific audience.

Once you have an idea about the kind of people that will be your customers, start thinking about the market in which you operate and start segmenting it. What kind of people exactly are you willing to cater to? Are you looking for retired individuals or individuals who have a high net worth? School kids or stay at home dads? You might be looking for people at a certain geographic location due to limitations that you face, and if this is the case, you will have to take care of this issue while posting content.

Once you have defined the target market that you are looking to attract, it is time to use the right tools that have the capability of building an attraction.

Blogging

There are many arguments going on right now about whether blogging is still relevant in the current marketing scenario, but it has to be accepted that it is the single best tool to attract customers because it has a very personal touch to it.

Perhaps one of the best reasons for blogging is that it drives traffic to your website, and this happens because some sort of attraction is created. Through a blog you can regularly post relevant content for your target market. For instance if you are working as a retailer for mobile phones, through a blog you can update the readers and visitors about all the new trends that are taking place, the new technology

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that is being implemented in upcoming phones, and the popular applications that are must-haves. A blog can basically be the central point of your social media engagement, and through social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter you can publicize your blog which should drive traffic to your website.

Another important reason why we recommend blogging is because it offers a great opportunity for search engine optimization. There are basically three rules that you have to take care of while blogging. Your content is supposed to be fresh, it should be engaging and personalized, and it should be filled with some relevant keywords that you think your target audience uses on the search engines. Through keywords, you will be able to rank higher on search engines and it will improve your discoverability as well.

Apart from increased discoverability for your website, through blogging you can also position your business as a professional one. If you have the ability to write really well, or if you are willing to hire a professional writer, then the readers will create a good first impression about your business through your writing, and blogging offers a great opportunity to your business to look professional.

Search Engine Optimization

As mentioned earlier, blogging gives you an opportunity to optimize search engine, and this is done by using relevant keywords so that the potential customers are automatically brought to your website through increased discoverability. SEO is not only done through blogging, but you can also implement it in other areas of your website such as the ‘About Us’ page, product descriptions and others. How it is done is a tricky question, but we will provide you with some useful tips that will help you in implementing SEO in the most effective manner.

Since the search engines are listing your website, you have to ensure that you are offering something good. This means that your content has to be really good and not just stuffed with keywords. Make sure you write your content in a natural way and do not focus so much on the keywords, but just fill them in fluently. Websites that rank higher on the search engines usually perform well. This means that the navigation on such websites is quite convenient and does not waste a lot of time of users. You also have to ensure that your website does not offer a poor user experience to the visitors because it is not only a turn off for the visitors, but also for the search engines. If you are able to take care of these things, you can implement SEO effectively and attract a lot of customers to your website and business.

Website

The content you post has the ability to create attraction among your potential customers, but since you are posting this content through your website and publicizing it through social media platforms, it is important to have a website that is not only good but great. Your website should be able to provide a complete experience to the users that visit it and should not disappoint them. One of the most

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important aspects of a great website is that it is supposed to be fast. Nobody likes a slow website, and usually when people spot a slow website, they do not make second attempt to visit it. Moreover, fill in a lot of content that the visitors may like or appreciate. You must post about the products, why people should buy them, relevant news about the products, the latest trends, and if possible, some testimonials from existing customers. People keep looking for proofs of satisfaction and need a proof to trust a business, and posting testimonials of your previous customers is a great way to build some confidence and attraction as well. Use engaging colors and make use of a great website design. Remember that you have a website not just to fulfill the purpose of e-commerce but to provide a complete experience to the visitors.

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CONVERT THEM Now that you have successfully cleared stage one and have created an attraction, people will start coming towards you and will feel the curiosity to check out what exactly you are offering. At this stage, these people are merely confused visitors and are not yet customers, but you can put a tag of “Potential Customers” on them. Once you place this tag on them, you have started making efforts to convert them into actual customers.

Converting a visitor into a customer is not an easy task and you cannot do that by running an advertisement campaign on your website, or by posting something unique that magically forces them to buy something. At this stage, you will have to gather some information about those people so that you can make a next move. Remember that contact information of a customer is very important and is actually considered precious because through this kind of information you can keep your customers updated about what you are offering, and also about all the new deals that are going around. Following are some of the tools that you can use to convert the visitors into customers.

Make use of forms

Since the first step of converting a visitor into a customer is to gather their contact information, you need to make use of a form that a visitor fills to submit contact details. Through forms you can generate leads, but your forms have to be optimized in a way so that the process becomes easier for the visitors and they do not hesitate to give out their contact details.

Your forms have to be simple rather than complex, and achieving this simplicity is not a very simple task. In order for the form to be simple you need to make sure that the number of fields is kept at a minimum. Think about the important details that you require instead of cluttering the form with all the things that you might require. These days there are many large businesses operating online that only ask visitors for their names, email addresses and mobile numbers so that they can be kept updated about all the new products and services. Sometimes websites do not even ask for mobile numbers because it is assumed that all contacts check their emails regularly. Moreover, since these people are giving out their information to your through a form, you should first make an attempt to build some sort of trust with them. Without trust, you cannot get their details.

Some of the trust building is already done through your perfect website and blogging techniques, but you need to also show them that you can genuinely cater to the needs of your customers. Ask for the information from the visitors in a user friendly manner and do not ask for information that is sensitive. Moreover, it is also a good practice to optimize forms for mobile phones. Most people will be visiting your website through their smartphones as most of the browsing these days is done using a phone, so make sure that filling out a form is not difficult through a mobile phone. If it is indeed difficult and painful, you will lose out on some genuine leads.

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Involve the visitors in the sales cycle

Imagine a website that has a lot of information about the product and the business, and has superb relevant content on its blog as well, but lacks some call-to-action on the website. No doubt, this seems like a great website, but without call-to-actions, or CTAs, you cannot really expect visitors to take a step forward and convert into customers. This is the reason why it is important to put up CTAs on your website.

What are CTAs? They are basically some form of images or text that demand an action from a customer. You can use a CTA to encourage a customer to purchase a product right away because it might be at a discount. Or at the end of an article you can put up a CTA and encourage the user to watch a product demonstration after which he can make a well-informed decision to either purchase it or not.

CTAs are great for marketing because they quickly capture potential customers and leads and force them into the sales cycle. Following are some of the examples that can be used through CTAs, and might be helpful to you:

• Subscription to a daily or weekly newsletter; or just a simple subscription to all the latest deals and products. • A link towards a video that demonstrates how a product is used and how effective it is. • Signing up for an account on the website. • A link to purchase the product directly and this could be incentivized with an introductory discount for new customers.

There are many people out there who do not really know what the best place to put up a CTA is, and this is actually a very good question if asked by someone. Usually, based on some of the leading and successful online businesses, at least three CTAs must be placed on the homepage.

The homepage is the first page that a visitor looks at and this is the best place to convert a visitor into a customer, so you need to put up your best and most convincing CTAs on the homepage. Moreover, it is also advised to have at least one CTA on each subsequent page. It is possible that while going through your website a visitor might feel the urge to immediately take an action that directly benefits you, so you should have CTAs in place to make this happen.

Manage the contact list

If you have used forms in an effective way, and have placed CTAs strategically, you will eventually get contact information from a lot of visitors. These contacts are not merely some phone numbers or email addresses, these are your precious leads that will eventually offer you money to buy your products and services. But in order to make that happen, you will have to manage your contact list.

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Keep all the contacts in a safe place and make backups because you cannot afford to lose them. It is good to manage the contact list in some order, for instance, you can manage them alphabetically, by sign up date, geographically, or any other way that may suit you. Through these contacts you can directly interact with your customers. Do not hesitate to send out new offers and deals that your business is offering, but make sure that you do not clutter the inboxes of your leads. If you send out emails too frequently, many might regard you as spam.

Some of the massive online businesses have made it a norm to send out emails to customers on a weekly basis; whereas on the other hand there are other businesses as well that send out daily emails and have experienced great conversion rates. But it all depends on the kind of product or service that you are offering. If you sell clothes, then it does not make sense to email customers about products on a daily basis, because let us face it, one cannot shop for clothes so often. On the other hand, if you are offering consumer items such as cosmetics and other household products, then it makes sense to interact with customers regularly because the need in this scenario is high.

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CLOSE THE SALE In the previous two stages you have successfully attracted the customers towards your business by posting and spreading interesting content and have also generated some precious leads. At this stage you have a huge contact list and all the people from this contact list are ready to be your customers and are prepared to offer you money for your products. But in order to make that happen, you will have to close the sale. At this point, there are several tools that you can use to close the sale.

Improve relationships with customers

One thing that you need to remember about closing a sale is that each customer of yours has different attributes. You have to view each contact or customer as a separate individual, and only then you will be able to realize how you can cater to their needs adequately.

One might ask, why improve relationships with customers? It is important because in the current business world, many top businesses and small ones have realized that the way to move forward is to retain all the existing customers, and this can be done through Customer Relationship Management, also known as CRM. Finding new customers is difficult, and it is also costly. You will have to carry out a whole new marketing campaign for that, and since you already have contact information of all the potential leads, use them in the best manner to improve relationships. You can do this by simply making an effort to find out about the behaviors of your customers in terms of purchasing and spending. Moreover, you can also try to improve your selling methods.

Perhaps the best benefit of CRM is that it equips you with the ability to react to different scenarios efficiently. Since you already have identified the needs of your customers and know exactly what they want and require, you can efficiently close the sale. Through CRM you can also identify the purchasing power of your customers and through this information you can sell in a very personalized manner to cater to different niches in your target market.

Email them

There are going to be times when a visitor will just move around your website, will respond to CTAs and will also give you his contact details, but he will always be hesitating to become your customer. This is a natural behavior among many people, and this is actually a problem for you because you are potentially losing out on a good customer. For these kinds of customers, all you have to do is build some trust with them.

By building a trustworthy relationship with your customers you will be able to convey them in a direct manner that you are someone who can be trusted, and you have the capability to deliver. This trust can be built by sending out emails to your contacts, but make sure that all such emails are relevant.

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Also, you should not bombard emails to your contacts’ inboxes because this is a very aggressive move and might scare away your customers. In these kinds of scenarios, all you have to do is have some patience.

Closing a sale with an email requires different kinds of skills. Usually when a customer finds that a business is really good and offers great products, they tend to become loyal customers and shop frequently with such businesses. The problem here is that you need a breakthrough with such customers. If you get the opportunity to make a sale with some of the customers, you might end up creating loyal customers out of them. But how will you be able to do that?

There are several businesses who have acquired a huge customer base through such techniques. These businesses send out great discount offers for a limited time to many introductory customers, and customers happily take them. Following are some of the introductory discount offers:

• “Get an introductory 15% discount on sign up!” • “Get amazing deals on electronics for the next two days!”

The first offer is encouraging a customer to sign up immediately and grab a 15% discount coupon. Through this technique you cannot only make a sale but also show the customer that you have the ability to offer great products and services.

Automate the marketing process

At some point, you will realize that there is a huge need to automate the marketing process. This automation basically takes into account the email marketing system but sends out emails based on the requirements of the customers. For instance, if there is a customer that clicks on a CTA which collects information from the customer and sends out price updates of a particular product, then you can automate this process and not only send out price updates to this customer but also send him emails about new products that have been added to your store that are more or less similar to the product that the customer signed up for.

This automation is mainly used to convert traffic into leads, but it is also an excellent tool if you want to close the sales, and you can do this by focusing on the needs and demands of the customers. It must also be remembered that if you go ahead and automate this process, do not make it look like a robotic marketing strategy. Have a smart strategy in place and keep nurturing this strategy so that you can eventually score some sales from your leads. Some businesses have found that it is also great to close sales by sending out relevant content to their customers.

Imagine a scenario where you are running an online business and selling laptops. You can use a strategy where you run a blog regularly and post amazing relevant and recent content on this blog related to laptops. You can start posting on topics such as “Top 5 Laptops of 2015”, and send this content right to your contacts. You will obviously have to filter out your content, set aside the quality

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content that has the ability to close sales, and automate the sending of such content. The reason why this kind of content has the ability to close a sale is because of the phrasing of the topic. When a customer will read that a certain laptop is being named a top laptop of the year, and coincidentally this laptop is also being offered by you, then you will eventually start experiencing some cash inflow.

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BRING OUT THE LOYALTY The very basic rule of running a business is that a transaction does not end when a customer pays you for a product or a service. In an ideal business world, this transaction is not supposed to end. A businessman would never want a customer just to pay money for a product or service and disappear, he would want that customer to come again from time to time to make purchases, and this is basically the fourth step of inbound marketing.

In the previous three steps you have successfully attracted customers, grabbed their contact information, generated some leads, and have also successfully closed the sales. At this point you have actually made some money, but if you really want to reap the benefits of inbound marketing then you have to make sure that you convert your customers into loyal customers so that they keep coming back and do not make future purchases with your competitors.

Staying in touch with all the clients can do this and you should engage with them as well. All you need to do at this stage is to make them so happy that they not only become loyal customers but eventually start to act as your brand ambassadors and promote your business through word-of-mouth approach, or any other kind of marketing technique that directly benefits your business. Following are some of the steps that you can take to bring out that loyalty from your customers.

Take surveys

One of the best ways to know what exactly your customers require is by asking them directly, and you can gather such answers by asking them to fill surveys. It is not very difficult to get the surveys filled these days. All you have to do is create an online survey, and send the link to this online survey to your existing customers through email. You could also prompt each visitor to your website to kindly fill out a survey, or publicize it through social media accounts of your business.

Surveys do not really cost anything, and taking surveys is part of the primary research that you should conduct from time to time. Taking online surveys technically does not cost anything, but if you realize that you are not able to get many responses from your existing customers, then you can always include some sort of incentive. You could offer the respondents some discount coupons if they take part in the survey, or set up a lucky draw for all the respondents.

Moreover, surveys are also really useful in gathering research because surveys are extensive in research. Businesses that are large and have a lot of customers should not face difficulties in analyzing the results from surveys because they are very broad in nature and can essentially cover all the important topics. Through the results you can also draw some meaningful conclusions.

Professionals have stated that you can get honest answers from respondents if you allow them to take surveys anonymously. You can send out anonymous surveys to customers, but most of the time

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it would not be necessary because you are not really asking for any sensitive information. All you need to focus on is whether the customer liked your service and what kind of additions to products and services they would like to see on your website. Through this feedback, you can start improving your business. However, if the information you wish to gather is sensitive in nature, then do not ask for names of the people or their contact details so that you can gather accurate information and honest answers.

Once you have all the survey results, you can easily analyze all the data. You will be able to see how many of your customers are satisfied with your service and you might even get feedback on your performance. By following the directions of the customers and acting upon them, you give your existing and potential customers some faith that even if there are issues with your business, you are willing to act upon them. This is a major trust building activity and will help you in converting customers to loyal customers.

Modified CTAs

If you have been reading this book till now, then you already know what CTAs are and why they are useful. Initially, you had to put up CTAs on your website so that visitors could be encouraged to take actions and convert themselves into customers, but at this stage, you require modified CTAs for existing customers.

Modified CTAs are basically those offers that show up to users based on their buying patterns and behavior, and based on their lifecycle stage. Each customer is on a different lifecycle stage. Some customers are currently only browsing and doing some research, whereas some buyers have already made some purchases from you and are ready to take that next step, but they do not know how. This is where you make use of modified CTAs, or smart call-to-actions, where you present such customers with offers that are relevant to them.

We can understand this phenomenon through a simple example. For instance if you are able to spot a certain group of customers that have purchased mobile phones from your online store, you get the opportunity to send such customers offers related to mobile phone accessories, or upgraded models of mobile phones. Through these kinds of modified CTAs you can ensure that a client comes back to you to shop again, and eventually you will create customer loyalty.

Some more quality content

As mentioned before, quality content is paramount for a business to succeed because it is content that sets the tone of a business and attracts people. At previous stages you were posting content for search engine optimization and generating interest among audiences, but at this stage you need to keep posting quality content so that you can retain all your customers. You need to understand that when a customer approaches a business, he is looking for a complete experience and is looking

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forward to fulfilling his own goals, which are related to personal satisfaction with the shopping experience.

For instance, if you are operating an online store that sells clothes and fashion accessories, you should ideally keep posting content related to fashion and latest trends. Seasons change four times a year, and you should have products relevant to all seasons, and as seasons change, you should start posting new content that is relevant and new. You can post this content on your blog, and send out the topics of all new content in an email. By doing this you create additional interest among your existing customers and they will be urged to visit your blog or view your content to check out what new is happening, and how your business can help them in remaining relevant to the season.

There are many businesses that send customers relevant content through emails. For instance there are many certification boards that send out tips regarding finding entry level jobs if they have taken an introductory exam or certification. Through this kind of content they keep the customers interested and subconsciously build a place in the minds of the customers so that they are further encouraged taking certifications from their board or organization. Similarly, this is the kind of strategy that is also used by many retailers who have a physical outlet. Such retailers call their customers when new stock has arrived in the stores.

So once again it is all about content. You need make the customers believe that you are still relevant to them even after they have already purchased from you. The content will urge the customers to visit your website again and again, and meanwhile they will also browse through your products and services, and this may result in further sales and create customer loyalty.

Keep track of your customers

If you are interested in converting your existing customers into loyal customers, then you will have to keep track of them. What is the best way of knowing what others are doing? Yes, the answer is obvious and it is through social media. Social media platforms have provided us with the opportunity to know what a particular person is doing and saying. You are not supposed to stalk your customers or find out what kind of personal lives they are leading, but you should just investigate a little and see whether they are saying anything about you in particular.

You do have a right to know what others are saying about you on social media, and monitoring social media will help you in knowing what kind of conversations are happening that involve you. There are going to be times when you will notice people speaking good about you to another friend, and sometimes someone will simply review your product or service through a blog, or through Facebook. There might be community discussions about your business going on.

The main thing that needs to be understood here is that people are expressing themselves on social media, and if they are expressing something regarding your business, then you should know that an opinion is taking birth, and you should be aware of the opinion of the audience regarding your

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business. Through opinions, a perception of your business will be created and it is your job to create a positive perception of your brand.

If you want to learn what people are saying about you on Twitter, then just go on Twitter and insert the name of your business in the search bar, or the name of the product, and you will be presented with several relevant tweets. There are also many Facebook groups where people review products and share their personal opinions. Such people also tag the pages of the businesses in their posts, so it is important for you to have a Facebook page.

In this way if a customer wants to share his opinion with the world, he will simply tag you as well in the post, and you will be exposed to the post as well. If it is a positive post about your business and product, you can just intrude and say a simple “Thank you!” If it is a negative post full of criticisms, you can tell the people why your service did not live up to its expectations, and you could also show them some confidence that it would not happen again. People appreciate when businesses come upfront and take responsibility, and you could earn some good reputation by actively responding to customer queries on social media.

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LATEST TRENDS REGARDING INBOUND MARKETING Monitoring customers on social media and keeping track of them is important because it helps you in making some strategic decisions. Moreover, by keeping track of customers you can indirectly keep track of customer feedback and ensure that the feedback is acted upon.

We already know at this point that more and more businesses are moving towards the implementation of inbound marketing, and there are many other businesses that are integrating both outbound and inbound marketing techniques in their marketing strategies. Here are some of the latest trends that are evident regarding inbound marketing.

Giving power to content

It has been stated earlier that content is crucial for inbound marketing, and the latest trends in marketing show that content has been playing a huge role in the overall marketing strategies because it helps in building some authority and credibility for the business. Through quality content, you cannot only build a reputation among your visitors, customers and followers, but also convert many customers into loyal customers. With quality and relevant content a business can successfully create a genuine following. Let us move on to numbers now to assess how great content exactly is. Over 90% marketers have been using content marketing to promote businesses and products, and from these 90% marketers, around 50% have stated that content does actually make the overall marketing strategy effective. Moreover, with great content, you cannot only get loyal followers, but also get a good ranking on search engines.

Integrate SEO with social media

Many marketers have started to realize that search engine optimization itself cannot bring a lot of visitors to a website, and this might be because of the changing algorithms that the search engines are using. Due to this reason, it has been noticed that many businesses and marketers are relying more and more on social media. If through SEO a business is not able to automatically bring visitors, it can do so by sharing content through social media. Through this strategy, a business ensures that content is visible at least to its followers, and rely upon these followers to further share content in their groups and social circles.

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Cookies and ads

A new strategy of ad retargeting is frequently being used these days, which makes use of cookies. The cookies keep track of user preferences, and when a user visits other websites, such user is shown relevant ads based on the products that he visited or searched for.

This strategy has worked really well in converting strangers into customers, and this is the strategy that is on a rising trend. Moreover, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have also started to implement such paid advertising campaigns, and these services of paid advertising will be on the rise.

Optimization for smartphones and tablets

According to Forbes in the coming years the sales of smartphones and tablets will increase, and this information should be taken seriously by businesses that want to implement inbound marketing strategies. It is important to have a website design that is responsive on a mobile phone or a tablet, and if you can invest in a mobile application that would be an added advantage. Popular search engine Google has also now stated that it will give priority to those websites that are responsive on mobile phones and tablets which means that this kind of optimization will really help you in terms of ranking on the search engine results. Mobile ads are also on the rise and this should be seen as an opportunity that you should exploit since we all know the amount of time people put in smartphones and tablets these days.

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CONCLUSION Now that you know how inbound marketing is carried out, let us sum up all the stages that have been discussed so far. Inbound marketing is basically about identifying at what lifecycle stage a certain customer is, and by identifying this stage effectively; you can modify your marketing technique and successfully boost the sales of your business. A business that has just started up, or a business that has not yet adopted inbound marketing can effectively convert a stranger into a customer, and this is what inbound marketing is all about. It gives the marketers the power first to attract people towards the business, convert them into potential customers and leads and eventually close the sale. Inbound marketing does not end once the sale is closed, because after that a marketer will have to make efforts to convert those customers into loyal customers at a point that they do not only frequently shop with you but also promote your business and brand name. Inbound marketing does sound theoretical at first, but since you have gone through the stages of inbound marketing and have learned about the tools that can be used to implement inbound marketing, you know that it can actually be implemented once you plan to do it. All you have to do is come up with quality content, direct it towards the right kind of people and use appropriate channels so that your efforts do not go wasted.

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"If you focus on cost, quality down. If you focus on quality, the cost will go down"

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