JUMP START Blog and Online Community

Inbound marketing is many things...but the one thing it's not? Simple. It's complex, multifaceted and, when done right, effective.

If you've wanted to implement inbound strategy but feel overwhelmed with where to start, here's a list of 26 (some of them are very simple) easy-to-do ways you can use inbound marketing to transform your reach and strengthen everything there is when it comes to your brand identity. Read on for our list of the best ways you can use inbound marketing to surge ahead of your competition. 

1. Develop Buyers Personas – This is, in a nutshell, the single most important aspect of inbound marketing. Buyer Personas are fictional representations of who your target demographic is. Once you have researched the age range, gender, specific problem they have, where they go for info (Facebook? LinkedIn? Pinterest? Google search?) you can then create and deliver content they would find useful. 
2. Define, then address, pain points – You'll start this process with your persona development, and you'll use it in everything you do. You don't want content that's just fluffy and shows "yay, you can create content!" You want content that's useful. So what's the main reason your audience needs you? Great! Now show them how you can help!
3. Personalize content – This is where your Buyers Personas become worth the time you invested in the process of getting them done. You know who your product or service is good for, and you know where those people are...now make sure your content is exactly what they need...and put it exactly where they go.
4. Use forms – Using smart forms on your site accomplishes two things. One, you gain valuable data and information about your customers. And two, you make it as easy as possible on them. Smart forms dynamically adapt to your user, displaying data and updating per their experience. Have they been there before? Filled out a form before? Capture more info and a better picture of who your customer is through the use of smart forms. 
   

Each week, the team here at Flair Interactive rounds up five of the top news articles on a relevant marketing, social or SEO topic. This week, we're talking inbound marketing. By the time you're done reading, it'll be a little bit closer to the weekend (and you'll be up to date with the latest in inbound marketing news)! You're welcome.

With the much-anticipated Royal Wedding having finally graced us all with its presence, we thought this quote uniquely apropos. So in the spirit of all-things-Royal, let’s break down this idea from social media guru-ess Mari Smith –

“Content is King but engagement is Queen, and the lady rules the house!”

Think about this: Engagement is Queen…

Honestly? This just could not ring truer. Because the truth is, you could post a blog every day, tweet multiple times a week, pin every gorgeous board you can imagine and Instagram the heck out of your insightful thoughts and nuggets of experienced, useful wisdom, but if your audience isn’t engaging with any of it…

...really, what is the point?

You can't just Ronco your content marketing - it simply isn't a set-it-and-forget it deal. You have to think about it, research it, plan it, craft it, edit it, revise it, post it...and that’s all just the background work.

THEN, you have to make sure it’s reaching your audience.

How? It’s exasperatingly very simple yet remarkably complicated, all at the same time.

The tricky part about engagement is it's about more than just what content you put out there…it’s also about how you put it out there.

Your goal is to give users what they want and need (even if they don't know it yet), which in turn fosters engagement. Your content marketing stategy should be developing content that's relatable, convenient and, ultimately, that solves a problem.

THIS is what nurtures engagement. And brands that engage, rule the house.

So often, as content marketers and online digital strategists, we see the same thing in our clients. Fear.

Despite what they may say the reason is for not biting the proverbial bullet and taking the reins on their digital presence, more often than not, it’s the result of one little thing: fear of charging the unknown.

In this week's #TBT post, we take a look back at Digital Marketer's 2013 blog "They won't buy without these 3 elements (and they won't even know why)."

What are those three magical marketing strategies?

Back in 2012, MOZ posted a great blog and video about how to delight the pants off of your community. 

It had some helpful tips, including:

• Give them points/thumbs up/stars
• Thank them
• Be human
• Show personality
• Make it easy
• Take it to email
• Take it offline
• Make it personal

There’s a reason SEO is an ongoing challenge for marketing professionals. It’s a fairly abstract concept.

There’s the part that’s easy to grasp—identifying words that resonate with each of our audiences. Now that makes sense. It’s easy for us to understand using the right words when communicating with one another in order to a make connection. That’s just being human.

But with SEO, it gets a little more complicated than that. We’re taking extra measures to ensure these words are identified by inanimate web crawlers. Now that sounds like Stephen King’s next best seller when you really think about it. That concept is a little more difficult to comprehend let alone throw into standard practice.

According to the Radicati Group, email use worldwide will top 3 billion users by 2020. While some industry experts are convinced that social media’s convergence with the ever depleting millennial attention span is going to erode email just as email depleted print, that number certainly presents a very different picture.  

Back in November 2013, Flair Interactive provided tips on building a successful email campaign. While that post is still relevant and accurate, in 2017, there are some definite changes in what defines and drives a successful email campaign.

So, what has changed in the last three years to keep email relevant, effective, and aligned with the technological trends that are impacting marketing as a whole? Let’s take a look:

Clamoring for new ideas to apply to your content marketing strategy? Get helpful content marketing insights from February's top five infographics:

More and more, little screens are stealing previous seconds of our attention, when we should be doing things like listening to a child, spouse or friend, working or even driving. Every day, the temptation to look at our mobile devices gets more addictive as people become more dependent on instant information and become masters of multitasking.

When you have so many distractions coming in from social media updates, live video, and non-stop streams of tempting click-bait digital content, it becomes harder and harder to market to your audience since you know their attention, just like yours is split up into many different areas. Not only will you have to catch their attention, you'll have to keep it as long as you can, and that's not very long.

Recently, it's been estimated that the average person is so distracted by their screens that they check their phone more than 1,500 times a week. So, if our attention spans as social beings have shrunk, it's no major shock. It's only last 8 seconds so you have to accomplish a lot in a little bit of time.

Keeping someone's attention and maintaining their concentration, to have them focused on your message is a massive deal. So, when it comes to marketing, capturing the attention of your audience is essential to developing a scheme that not only delivers your message but makes sure it's noticed and remembered.