10 Inbound Marketing Strategies Your Startup Should Already Use

Running a startup isn’t a walk in the park. Like playing Book of Ra online, it requires attention in so many aspects with just one aim in view: to grow. Growth for startups can be hectic because it requires a lot of effort. However, you can’t achieve raging growth without marketing. With traditional marketing prices shooting off the roof, the chances of fair competition with big guns of the industry seem bleak. Do startups have a chance? The answer is a big yes. Amid this chaotic dilemma, inbound marketing strategies are the light at the end of the tunnel.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a method of attracting customers or clients to your brand with compelling content such as SEO, video marketing, etc. This process is divided into three main steps.

First, you attract customers. After which, you convert them to leads with pop-up forms, landing pages, etc. Finally, closing the deal by converting them to paying customers. If your deal is remarkable enough, it can lead to more conversion. This is a surefire way to grow your startup.

Besides being a catalyst for startups, what are the benefits of inbound marketing? Ready to find out?

Digging Deeper into Inbound Marketing Strategies

The best inbound marketing strategy requires the delivery of valuable content. Startups with quality content always end up with long-lasting clients who can’t stop coming back for more. It also facilitates user engagements.

Summarily, the purpose of inbound marketing is to offer prospects value even before they become customers, unlike outbound marketing that provides value from the point of conversion.

Benefits of Inbound Marketing

• Increases client’s engagement with your brand
• Builds audience’s trust in your brand
• Creates massive brand awareness until you become an authoritative source in your industry
• Generates leads organically to save you money and time
• Customers get the impression that you understand their needs perfectly. It makes them more open to your product
• Earn recommendations and shares for your website

The truth is inbound marketing is the best bet for any startup to grow. The question is, how can you execute this marketing style and get results? Luckily for you, we know the best inbound marketing tactics to help your budding business boom. So, let’s get to work.

Top Inbound Marketing Strategies to Spur Massive Business Growth

Survey Your Customers’ Needs

Your target audience must feel like you are on their wavelength. You need to convince them that you understand their pain. And the only way to achieve this is by actually sharing in their pain.

Our best guess is that you are wondering how.

Well, the answer is simple: survey your current customers. The leads you have successfully converted have similar tastes with your prospect. Hence, understanding them will give you an idea of how to deal with your target audience.

Conducting a survey is not rocket science. If you have an email list, it’s as simple as sending a form via SurveyMonkey.

For effectiveness, ask only one all-encompassing question like what is your biggest struggle? You aim to understand their worries so you can develop content that addresses core problems. Undoubtedly, the solution to a significant problem would grab anyone’s attention.

Blogging Works Like Magic

Blogging isn’t in the past. And it isn’t going into extinction anytime soon. You heard that right. This is one of the inbound marketing strategies that drives engagement.

Writing quality content is still valuable. Admittedly, it’s the most important feature in inbound marketing. So, what makes content compelling?

Brian Dean from Backlingo created a strategy named the Skyscraper technique. It entails creating incredibly valuable content that exceeds any competitor’s attempts at the same content. It means your content should contain more research, facts, details, and above all, offer more value than any other.

Blogging requires tailoring all your content to suit the demands of your target per time. That’s how the best content marketers end up with significant conversions. Research shows that marketers with a flair for blogging have a higher chance of positive ROI. Companies with a functional blog get 97% more leads to their sites.

Craft Attractive Headlines

Writing compelling content starts with a captivating headline. No one reads copies with a headline that doesn’t create a spark. So, find power words that can invoke an action, preferably a click and conversion, from your target audience.

Make your audience curious enough to read your content. A quick way to achieve this is by using negative headlines. Because we remember negative events more vividly, negative headlines elicit strong emotions that drive a customer to conversion. While you can’t always use a negative headline, you must always ensure your words are punchy enough.

Get Funky with Visuals

Blocks of texts are boring. Little wonder most people seldomly read long articles till the end. It makes it even worse when the paragraphs are long and boring. But with visuals? You can make your content king.

Readers can associate more with visuals. Hence, they would gladly read a lengthy article with interesting graphical representations and images instead of a short article without visuals.

More visual content has the potential to boost your content for inbound marketing.

Introduce Storytelling in Your Content

Storytelling is another feature that enhances engagement. Using figures and graphs from research isn’t an excuse to create dry and plain copy. We all love stories, especially when it’s relatable. Introducing storytelling into your content is one way to drive traffic.

A study by Stanford University reveals that 63% of people are more likely to remember a story than a statistic.

Now, this is where you need to get creative. Finding ways to weave a relatable story into your content requires a form of creativity.

Maximize Your SEO Results with Keyword Optimization

SEO is one of the inbound marketing channels you should master to improve your startup immensely. Today, the marketplace is largely search-driven. Hardly will you find a customer attempt to purchase a product without research.

The essential features to focus on are your content, on-page SEO, and your site’s backlinks. You can achieve this through Keyword Optimization.

Find specific long tail keywords which match or suit your audience’s deepest interests. These are a great way to drive higher click rates due to their specificity.

Build effective Email Campaigns

Email marketing is crucial to the inbound marketing funnel. Although email marketing is trendy, some marketers don’t know how to use it effectively.

Honestly, email marketing averages $42 ROI for every $1 spent on emails. This ROI is higher than other inbound marketing channels, making email marketing a necessity for any growing startup. You need to create emails strategically to promote your brand in the best way possible.

Introducing factors like automation and a fluid email flow will make the entire process a breeze. Promoting your brand via email marketing is one of the best business decisions ever.

Don’t Leave Out Influencer Marketing

We can’t help but mention influencer marketing. This inbound marketing tactic triggers rapid conversion rates for startups.

Influencer marketing saves money and, at the same time, gives you a chance to compete with bigger brands. Statista confirms that influencer marketing returns $11.69 to each $1 spent on average. Besides being cost-effective, it can expose your startup brand to an established company of experts.

Another benefit of this marketing strategy is that it isn’t rigid. It can take any form anytime. However, we recommend that you engage micro-influencers. These influencers have earned a reputation for instigating content engagement.

Host A Free Webinar for Your Target Audience

Webinars have taken the internet by the storm. And even now, it doesn’t seem like their popularity will rescind.

Organizing free webinars or training sessions for your audience is a way to relate personally to them. It also shows that you care to a certain level. Apart from learning new things, they will engage with your brand more.

An opportunity to learn something new for free can generate multiple leads in record time. Webinars are also an opportunity to build your email list ahead of an organized email marketing structure.

Attract Your Ideal Audience on social media

Social media is one of the best means to reach customers. Everyone is on social media. Hence, creating content that promotes your business and earns you more conversion is seamless.

However, an inbound marketing strategy that involves social media doesn’t stop with a customers’ follow. Above engaging the content on your social media, you should have a working structure to convert those follows into leads.

Build your social media contents around valuable posts that appeal to the customers’ emotions. You can also fill your inbound marketing funnel with offers like valuable blog posts and downloadable guides. Attracting your target audience to your social media page increases your chances of generating a lead.

Grow Your Business with These Inbound Strategy Examples

The best way to grow your customer base organically is through inbound marketing. As a startup, your growth depends on how many prospects you can attract and convince to trust you. By using all the basic inbound strategy examples above, inbound marketing will be a cinch. In no time, you’ll watch your business skyrocket with a phenomenal spike in conversions.

Do you have any positive stories of how these inbound marketing strategies helped you thrive in your industry? Let us know in the comment section below.

This article originally published on GREY Journal.