Have you ever wondered what the top inbound marketing companies are doing to generate leads successfully?

Many businesses try some form of inbound marketing with mixed results. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of the 11 top inbound marketing secrets experts use to consistently bring in inbound leads.

1. Provide Customers With A Great First Impression

The saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover” doesn’t apply to inbound marketing. The moment someone reaches your website, they will start judging your business. If it doesn’t look professional, is difficult to navigate, slow to load, or confusing, visitors will leave immediately.

First impressions are especially important. Because when visitors leave your site, they have a certain perception about your brand, which is difficult to change.

Treat your website as a salesperson who works for you 24/7. Apart from giving a good first impression, it must provide informative content that users are looking for.

The pages need to be fully optimized for both mobile and desktop experience, have the required call-to-action (CTA), a section to answer frequently asked questions (FAQs), and forms for users to get in touch with you.

2. You Are The Expert In Your Business

The fact is, no one knows your company and industry as well as you do. Inbound marketing agencies need input from you and your team. For instance, you need to provide your business goals, the sales process to acquire new or returning customers and key performance indicators.

They will also need to know who your ideal customers are, who your main competitors are, how you stand out from them, and the latest trends in the industry.

You are the expert in your business. And the agency is the expert at inbound marketing. By working together, you’ll have everything you need for a successful inbound marketing strategy.

3. Listen to Your Target Audience

The number one thing you can do when it comes to improving your inbound marketing is to simply listen to your audience. Having a strong understanding of what your audience is looking for will help you produce the highest-quality, relevant content – precisely what your target audience is looking for!

If you listen carefully, your audience will give you all sorts of suggestions for what their pain points are, and what they need to resolve them. Connect with your audience through multiple channels to access this information.

You might consider surveys, social media, in-person interactions, or more creative means to interact and connect with your audience.

4. Publish the Right Kind of Content Consistently

A huge part of effective inbound marketing is publishing content. But it doesn’t mean posting any kind of content.

You need content that is relevant and valuable to your ideal client. It should provide solutions and answer questions to their most pressing issues.

Content comes in various forms, not just blog posts and articles. There are case studies, videos, e-books, social media posts, and more.

Good content will encourage your visitors to come back to your website to consume more of your content. It will position you as the authority and set you apart from your competitors. That’s the right kind of content you want to publish consistently.

5. Long Content is Best

Churning out tons and tons of content to post all over your social platforms has lost its place in the greater marketing world. Instead, as we said before, is the time for valuable content. This means lengthy content that will appeal to and attract customers.

With that in mind, produce relevant content that answers the questions your potential customers are asking. You must educate them, solve their dilemmas, and inspire them.

Keep in mind, in today’s digital marketing world, longer posts are more likely to rank higher in search engine results than shorter ones (source). Ideally, you should shoot for blog posts with a word count of about 2500, or more, to generate leads quickly.

6. Add CTAs to the Text of Your Blogs

CTAs are a refining element when it comes to your blog posts, and they can help you take the process to the next level. A simple call-to-action gives the reader a direct way to connect with your product or services through more detailed content, an interesting offer, or some educational material. This all helps contribute to a more meaningful conversation with your target audience.

CTAs are most commonly placed at the end of a blog post. This way, a reader will make their way through the content, and then click on the CTA for more. While this is effective, there are other ways to utilize the CTA to get more conversations and improved lead generation.

Consider in-text CTAs. In-text CTAs have the advantage of avoiding taking the reader out of the content. In fact, the in-text CTA should be aligned with the content of the blog post so the information flows and isn’t a jarring change.

7. Recycling Blog Posts Is A Great Idea

Another way to effectively connect with your audience is to recycle some of your older content.

Go back through your old content to find things that are still relevant to your audience to reshare. Try adding new social media hashtags to your posts – especially anything that is both trending and relevant – to spark interest in your older content.

You might also try keeping an eye on the metric of your older posts. If you start to see some of the traffic begin to drop off, try updating those posts with new information and insights. Refining your once-popular content helps keep it relevant and improves the chances it will rank higher in search engine results.

8. Find Your Appropriate, Data-Driven Metrics

So far, we’ve discussed several tips to help make your inbound marketing more effective. But none of it will matter if you’re not measuring and analyzing your results.

Once you’ve got your strategy up and running it’s critical that you study the results to assess what is working – and what isn’t. You must study not only your users, but the overall market behaviour as well.

Although every company will have its own business goals, some common metric to consider include:

• Where traffic to your website is coming from.
• The number of website visitors you convert into leads.
• The number of leads converting into customers.
• Which content generates the most traffic and highest conversion rates.
• Tracking returning and converting visitors.
• Bounce rates.
• Social media growth and engagement.
• Overall marketing return-on-investment.

9. Constant Internal Website Testing

The best part about digital marketing compared to traditional forms of marketing is the amount of data at your disposal, in real-time. Inbound marketing companies leverage this data in their approach to marketing.

You may think that you’ve produced the best piece of content. But the metrics from the data don’t lie. Your customers will tell you what they don’t like and what types of content they want more of.

Top inbound marketing companies carry out numerous tests all the time. And they can analyze the data and adjust the approach to make sure that they’re moving towards your goals.

For instance, changing the button colours, changing the headline, or the layout of the landing page are just some examples of testing that can be done. Some of the tests can be so small you won’t even notice, but they will add up to more significant results.

10. Understand the Synergy Between Marketing & Sales

When your customers buy your product or services, they don’t differentiate if they are speaking to marketing or sales. They see your company as one whole experience.

Unfortunately, that’s not how most businesses operate. They have a separate marketing and sales team. The marketing team generates the leads and hands them over for the sales team to close.

In many cases, customers get confused when the sales experience is different from the marketing content they have consumed. This is a turn-off that causes lost deals.

Instead, marketing and sales must work in unison, providing a seamless experience. They should have one focus, which is to close more deals and increase revenue for the business.

For example, the sales team can provide the marketing team with objections they have been receiving. And the marketing team can address them in the form of content. This can help to decrease the sales cycle and increase the closing rate.

11. Results May Take Longer Than You Expect

No inbound marketing strategy can bring you new leads overnight. That’s not how inbound marketing works.

It takes time to get some traction, generate substantial traffic coming to your website, and convert them to leads. It will require adjusting to market feedback and tweaking of strategy before the campaign is dialed in.

It could take months or even years. It depends on several factors like your industry, how competitive the market is, and your budget.

Inbound marketing is a long-term lead generation process. The end goal is to have a sustainable, repeatable, and predictable lead generation machine. For best results, trust the process that your agency has laid out for you.

Conclusion

Inbound marketing works if it’s done correctly. If you’ve done inbound but not seeing results, there are many possible reasons. Consider working with a top inbound marketing agency to eliminate the factors that are hurting your marketing efforts.

If that interests you, or if you’re looking for more inbound marketing tips, book a consultation with one of our experts. Discover how you can remove the limiters and finally see inbound leads coming into your business.