There are tons of ways content can help in inbound marketing. Generating potential leads being the topmost. So before we get started, let’s first delve into what inbound marketing really is.
Inbound marketing simply refers to making your potential leads come to you by providing them with valuable content. On the flip side is outbound marketing (cold calling, billboards, TV ads, door-to-door sales, etc.) that bombards the audience with information they might not want.
Ask anyone in the content writing services industry, and they’ll tell you that meaningful content is the mantra when it comes to inbound marketing. It’s all about empowering your audience with knowledge and building a trusting relationship with them.
So how does web content come into the picture? How can content draw in potential leads and convert them to customers? You can use three strategies here:
Attraction: Attraction depends on the pain points of your customer. What are they lacking? What do they need? If you create content like blogs, webinars and infographics that solve their questions and give them something valuable, then they would visit your website more often.
Engagement: But having these potential leads on your site is not enough. Sometimes the bounce rates on web pages are high. So, your content needs to be immersive and engaging.
Delight: Hurray! You’ve got a new customer. But what guarantees this customer will make a repeat purchase? The key is to keep them happy and supported even after the purchase. How about a quick survey? Or maybe design a chatbot on your website whom they can ask for assistance.
Most web content revolves around these strategies. But the endgame is the same: get more leads and drive more sales. Some of the most popular content formats include:
Home Page
Think of it this way, when your guests come home, do you lead them directly to the kitchen or the bathroom? No. Well, it isn’t any different for websites either. The moment a person clicks on the link to your site, they see your home page. And boom! The first impression is made.
That’s why having a well-designed home page is crucial to inbound marketing. How do you create a good home page? All you need to do is:
Have a Great Headline
Three seconds. It’s all you have to capture viewer interest.
Write a headline that states your value proposition and touches on their pain points. That is, who you are and what you can do for your viewers.
Include Call to Actions
So you’ve got your potential leads interested with your headline. Now you got to push them further down the inbound marketing funnel. The best way to do this is by giving them a firm push towards action. This is where your call to actions come into play.
‘Sign Up’, ‘Get A Free Trial’, ‘Book An Appointment Today’ are all classic call to actions.
Create An Easy Navigation
Good navigation can be the difference between a bounce and a sale. Once the viewers come to your home page, show them where they need to go. Keep the drop-down menus and navigation bar on the topmost area in full sight.
Overcrowding can be a turn-off for most viewers too. Select the content that is important to you.
- Include details about the product or service
- Provide information about the face behind the business
- Give links to your ‘Contact Us’, ‘About’ and blog pages
Landing Pages
As the name suggests, the landing pages are where visitors land after clicking the link embedded on the email or social media ads you send out.
Landing pages are designed with gripping ads and a powerful call to action. They have a singular purpose of moving the visitors further into the sales funnel. Yes, we know what you’re thinking, “Isn’t that what the home page is for?”
Yes and no. Sure the home page looks great. But it’s filled with links, drop-down menus and multiple calls to actions. And while this is perfect if your audience deliberately seeks out your website, it can be a distraction otherwise.
So we have the landing page. Simple, clutter-free and created with a purpose to convert existing traffic into sales. Some of the ways a landing page can be effective include:
- Using contrasting colours for the call to action button to make it pop out
- Including animations, short videos or infographics of how to use the product or service
- Adding social proof such as reviews, awards, testimonials and more.
Blogs
Blogging is the best white-hat SEO strategy to get more traffic to your website. And in turn, potential leads. It’s even Google-approved! If you only have your homepage and category pages, it reduces the content on the website and limits the number of people who would visit it.
According to Hubspot, businesses that blog see an 82 per cent increase in their return on investment. Another study shows that 62 per cent leads in B2B marketing platforms come from blogs. By writing blogs with relevant, SEO-friendly content, you can attract more visitors to your website. These blogs even can include calls to actions that direct them to the landing pages.
- Blogs help humanize your brand by building it an identity. The content you write can give your company a voice and help build a relationship with your potential leads.
- Using keyword-rich content and outbound links can improve the rankings of your content on SERPs, generating more traffic.
- They help gather information about and analyze your target audience through metrics and subscriptions.
White Papers & Case Studies
So you’ve got friendly and conversational blogs generating traffic for you and building a rapport with your visitors. But so do your competitors. What sets you apart? Here’s where white papers and case studies do their magic.
- White papers and case studies establish you as a subject matter expert. Between two companies that both sell the same service and blogs, these authoritative guides can make all the difference.
- They are original research.
- Blogs can get repetitive. That’s the unfortunate truth. Most content on the internet is duplicated. But as white papers and case studies are original, they act as social proof. They are indispensable in B2B marketing as they provide solutions to your audience’s pain points. Most CEOs and top executives would be interested in reading a white paper rather than a daily blog.
- Need more leads? Make your visitors sign-up with their contact details to access these white papers. In this transaction, they get the knowledge they want, and you get to create an invaluable database of potential customers.
Product Descriptions
If you’re an e-commerce platform or have a catalogue of your products online, you need to have a description of said products. They provide information and help in increasing the traffic on your web pages too.
These days, people research a product online then make the decision of buying it. By checking which are the long-tailed keywords used by your potential leads, you can direct them to your website through the product description.
Say you’re a furniture company, selling a table. If your potential leads search ‘four seater wooden table’, you can include this keyword in your description. Unlike blogs or white papers, product descriptions can enable visitors to go directly to purchase.
And if they don’t purchase your product or service, hey, you still get more traffic!
Category Pages
One of the hallmarks of a good website is user-friendly navigation. The credit of which goes mostly to category pages. A category page is a web page where different pages belonging to a similar theme are clumped together. So if you’re an online apparel store, a category page in your website can be ‘Men’s Shirts’ where the individual product pages appear.
They help optimize the SEO ranking of your website as you can include fresh, new content and more keywords. The best thing about category pages is that they let you direct your visitors deeper into your webpages.
The internal links to individual product pages aside, you can even include links to other parts of your website. How about adding links to related products under the ‘Customers Also Bought’ anchor text? So in the category page for men shirts, you can embed the link to other category pages like men’s trousers or accessories. You can even add customer reviews to your category page to increase credibility.
Buying Guides
Including buying guides in your web content is another fantastic idea to get an edge over your competitors. Plus, they help improve your SEO rankings. How? Keywords, of course.
Most people turn to search engines to figure out how things work or to know more about a product. By including these keywords in your buying guides, your webpage can be the first thing they see after searching their query. This generates more traffic.
Buying guides are also useful as an engagement strategy for inbound marketing. So you’ve made a sale, and want to develop a relationship with the customer to retain them. Having a quick how-to-use video, infographic, or brochure can improve customer satisfaction, driving them to make repeat purchases or give you more leads through recommendation.
Just like category pages, buying guides can have strong calls to actions and internal links that push the visitors to dig deeper into your website.
To Sum It Up
Content and content marketing is an indispensable part of inbound marketing. If your inbound marketing strategy is a process that converts potential leads into loyal customers, the different content formats are the actions that get them there.
Buyers today are hungry for information. By providing them with SEO-optimised content that has a strong information scent, you feed their needs while increasing your database.
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