You’re not alone. I’ve seen Internet entrepreneurs who have set aside a huge advertising budget. If you ask me, why should you waste your hard earned money when you can easily leverage on ‘existing’ resources to grow your business? It doesn’t matter how much effort you’ve put into your blog or website, growth is sure if you adhere to my strategy. Most of what we do online to grow our business is ‘beggarly’ in nature. Yes, I know cold-calling can be effective when properly done, but it’s a form of begging and you ought not to inconvenience potential prospects with your offers. Instead of chasing after buyers, and using tricks indirectly, there is a better way to make it work.
Inbound Marketing Strategy (IMS)
The best way to attract paying customers, fill your client-cabinet with high paying business owners and become the go-to for quality services, is ‘inbound marketing.’ The word “in” has to do with internal structure of your business. Everyone is desperate to grow her business — bloggers, webmasters, social media examiners, and search engine consultants are taking the difficult route: outbound marketing. They’re trying to persuade and force money out of prospects. When you look at it from the top, it’s actually a wrong approach to marketing. When doing business, whether online or offline, the goal is to position yourself where the right people can find you. Instead of you going to them, they’ll search for and pay handsomely for your services. But when you force prospects, your true service-worth would be forgotten. Don’t let this happen to you.
Get Started With Inbound Marketing
Now, we’ve established that inbound marketing is the way to go. I know you’ve questions pertaining to this – how do you get started? Well, inbound marketing is a form of marketing that’s powered 100% by strong and effective content marketing system. What better way can you attract paying customers without rushing to them?
Niche Blogging – The “Inbound Marketing” Way
Several online entrepreneurs are not utilizing the full potential that a blog has. It’s not just an online diary, where hobbies and adventure characters are jotted down; it can be a complete business, existing as a legal entity and has the ability to announce you to the world. When I say the world, I’m talking about your target audience – you don’t actually need everyone on your business, all you need is the right people. Few targeted customers are better than one million visitors who do nothing. But guess what? Blogging itself cannot attract prospects, you need to streamline the entire system and target a particular market. Rather than blogging about finance, why not break it down and target a group of finance-enthusiasts. E.g. you could blog about personal finance, investing, penny stocks, frugal living, lifestyle et al. When you concentrate on a specific niche and scale it through, you’ll become an expert, your voice would be heard around the web, and prospects would start to come through word of mouth and search engines.
Write Epic Content from Your Heart
Now that you’ve chosen a unique niche to target, it’s time to start writing. Anyone can write a blog post, but only few people can write quality, epic and evergreen content. Google knows the quality of your posts, length actually matters and when you’re dealing with hot topics about new technologies, you’ve to write a lengthy or cornerstone content. This way, your content would appear relevant, detailed and well researched – great resources for those people who want complete answers.
Inbound Marketing: Four Effective Highlights
For clarity and efficiency, here are the four highlights on how inbound marketing can grow your business. Take notes of:
Rabid Niche Strategy – a rabid niche will continue to send targeted buyers your way, even when you’re away on vacation. The people in your niche must be desperate for solutions, and they’re determined to pay for it.
Start a blog – Blogging is the ultimate medium to voice out your opinions on a specific topic, without feeling awkward or unimportant. To establish expertise quickly, a corporate website may not be helpful at this point, get a blog immediately
Write epic contents – Google and other search engines rewards hard work, well-researched contents and engaged audience. If you consistently churn out 300 – 500 words articles, you’re sending a wrong signal to search engines – it’s like you’ve limited knowledge on this niche – choose a niche you can write extensively on.
Educate and entertain – when potential customers finally make it to your blog, you’ve to educate and entertain them. Can you make your epic contents interesting, add light humor where necessary, and then get ready for massive viral marketing that comes naturally?
(Photo credit: Ideal Hit on Dartboard via Shutterstock)
