What is Inbound Marketing?

What is Inbound Marketing?

Let’s start with a definition.

Inbound marketing is a set of marketing strategies and techniques focused on getting found online and turning web visitors into leads or customers.

When a prospect types a term into a search engine, effective inbound marketing will position you at the top of the organic search results, deliver engaging content and move that prospect toward a purchase.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Why is Inbound Marketing important?

More than half of all US residents and more than three-quarters of all US adults are online.1

One third of US consumers spend at least 3 hours online every day.2

46% of daily searches (on a search engine like Google, Bing or Yahoo) are for a product or service.1

1 Blogher, April 2011, Pew Research, May 2010, US Census Bureau, May 2011; 2 The Media Audit, October 2010

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound Marketing breaks down into four core components:

1. Search Engine Optimization2. Blogging3. Social Media4. Lead Generation and Nurturing

Let’s look at each area more closely . . .

What is Inbound Marketing?

•Search Engine Optimization

Component #1

Worldwide, we conduct 88,000,000,000 searches per month on Google.3

If your business is not ranking well for the words that describe your products and services, then you’re not getting found for those “keywords” by potential customers. With the tremendous amount of searches taking place every day, you are missing out on a huge opportunity if you are not optimizing your website for search.

3 Search Engine Land, February 2010

What is Inbound Marketing?

•Blogging

Component #2

Prospects, customers and search engines all love the content generated through blogging: prospects because it helps them understand what you do; your customers because it helps them stay up to date with your offerings and thought leadership; and search engines because each post represents another page that they can index for a specific topic and feed to others searching that phrase.

What is Inbound Marketing?

•Social Media

Component #3

Marketers who spent 6 hours a week or more using social media and engaging/sharing content on it saw 52% more leads than those who did not.4

Having active social media accounts on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is no longer a ‘nice to have’ – it’s a ‘must have’. Social media is an effective way to not only create exposure for your business online, but it is a proven way to significantly engage with prospects and generate leads.

4 Social Media Examiner, 2011;

What is Inbound Marketing?

•Lead Generation and Nurturing

Component #4

According to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing are able to generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost per lead.

Content offers on a website should be designed to educate your prospects. By providing them with this advice, they will come to understand how your goods and services could potentially fill their needs – turning them into leads. Lead nurturing campaigns help you further educate and build relationships with non-sales-ready leads in a scalable, effective way.

What is Inbound Marketing?

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Who we are

We provide inbound and direct marketing services to businesses and nonprofit organizations. For over 40 years, we have been helping our clients develop, manage and execute their marketing plans.

Visit us online at www.rivkind.com or call us at 781-344-2650 to learn more about the services we provide.