Without question, the internet has risen to become the heart of the world’s marketing machine. Let’s take a quick look at five ways that any business with a website can use to increase their “inbound marketing” efforts and attract new customers.
Guest Blogging on Industry or Niche Blogs
Guest blogging is all the rage as of late, which means that it’s high time that your business jumps on the train. This basically involves getting in touch with bloggers in your industry to ask if they would be interested in having you write up a post that they can then post on their blog and share with their users. The outreach portion of this can be a bit of a pain, so train someone up or outsource this piece.
Make Use of Press Releases and Media Contacts
Press releases and individual media contacts are a prime way to bring in attention to your products and services. A press release can be sent out for virtually any reason, however, they are best reserved for important items such as huge sales or product launches. Once the release goes live, be sure to share it on to those bloggers and journalists who might be interested in covering the news.
Infographics – Yes, They Still Work
While infographics – the very long cartoonish images that make factual data and statistics more interesting – have been overused in the past year, there is still some life in them when used correctly. If your industry has any sort of interesting statistics, get a graphic designer to do up some infographics and share them around to industry blogs.
Flex your Knowledge at Q&A Sites
Question and answer websites like Quora and Yahoo! Answers are a decent way to earn a little bit of free, pre-qualified traffic while helping these individuals out. Simply answer any questions that your business has the ability to answer, and recommend that they visit your website if they have anything else that you can help with.
Participating in Online Forums
Finally, online forum groups are another prime way to show off your company’s knowledge and skills to others who are interested participants in your industry. Have one of your employees participate in every forum with more than a few hundred (real) members so that you can be a part of the discussion. These are just five of the many ways that a business can leverage the power of the internet to bring in new business. Use one or use them all – you’ll soon see that your visitor traffic increases and with it, new purchases will result!
Inbound marketing is Edward’s main duty at the office, as well as monitoring their Aprimo integrated marketing software installation that he supervises.