Several years ago SEO was the gatekeeper to being found online by customers. As buyers have grown savvy with instant access to information at the touch of their mobile devices, today’s purchasing decisions are made after doing careful research and weighing out one brand and their products against another.
While SEO is still an important part of uniting buyers with sellers, marketing automation and the inbound methodology is what truly drives sales by uniting the right content, with the right buyers, at the right time. As a result, stand alone SEO services are decreasing in value while certified inbound marketing agencies are the go-to resource for businesses who want to be the dominant force in their industry. Here are four ways top HubSpot inbound marketing agencies unite brands with buyers.
Blogging with the Inbound Marketing Methodology
Traditional blogging may have helped with SEO and lead to sales many years ago, but in 2018 blogging to the wind won’t amount to anything. Blogging with keyword laden content on a regular basis may move the needle a bit in increasing your domain authority, and in some cases it may even help with organic ranking, but the chances are high it won’t amount to much anymore. Why? Because the right buyers aren’t seeing your content. When blogging with the inbound marketing methodology, data taken from carefully researched buyer personas are used to craft content that speaks to specific individuals on an intimate level. When precise pains and needs are met with content that offers solutions, sales numbers increase.
Social Media and Marketing Automation
There are a number of marketing automation platforms out there, but in this case we will focus on HubSpot. Posting your content through your social channels and to niche groups will no longer cut it if you expect to reach bonafide buyers looking for your products and services. HubSpot’s lead qualifying tool shows where contacts come in from, including all social outlets. Marketers can take this data and see what various social groups their buyers belong to, analyze the type of content that best performs in these groups, and get great ideas for producing content that converts. Additionally, marketing automation will send content out to these channels at the marketer’s discretion with data-capturing tracking.
SEO that can Actually be Tracked for ROI
One of the biggest gripes pitched by businesses owners who lacked SEO knowledge was this: “how the hell do I know SEO is responsible for my increase in sales”? Unless marketers used tactics outside the standard SEO offerings like Call Tracking on landing pages, there was no concrete proof showing where sales came from and therefore businesses weren’t keen on investing in an “opaque service”. Marketing automation platforms for inbound marketing use precise workflows that show exactly where buyers enter a funnel, where they came from, and where they convert. Now SEO is something you can hold in your hands and give direct value to in terms of proven ROI.
Landing Pages
Performance marketing and content marketing are indispensable components to any sales-driven strategy, and landing pages created from the inbound methodology are where these two entities come together, and convert buyers.
Traditionally, there have been major disconnects in how marketers use landing pages. Marketing Sherpa’s ‘Landing Page Handbook’ states that 44% of clicks are directed to a business’ homepage and not a strategic landing page. Before companies embraced the inbound marketing methodology, their landing pages were underutilized because internal teams didn’t know how to set them up. Additionally, no testing was done for growth driven efforts.
Inbound Marketing is the Missing Piece
If you have been running a digital marketing strategy with little to be desired, and you have yet to embrace the inbound methodology, now is the time! SEO may bring in the traffic, but as a stand-alone service it will convert very little given the wau buyer behavior has changes.
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