Inbound strategies can sometimes lead to faster conversion; so many businesses focus the bulk of their marketing efforts there. Let’s look at 7 ways you can improve your inbound marketing efforts to get results.

1. Seven Inbound
Marketing
Techniques That Get
Results
Dr. Rachna Jain

2. In the course of running your business, you’ve probably heard the terms “inbound”
marke@ng and “outbound” marke@ng as they relate to lead genera@on.
Simply put, inbound marke@ng is about aBrac@ng, engaging, and retaining your
audience so that you can create more customers with bigger life@me customer value.
Inbound relies on customers finding you, and seeking you out. This type of marke@ng
relies on the powerful human mo@vators of curiosity and the thrill of discovery.
Outbound marke@ng is about star@ng a conversa@on where none exists- it’s the more
tradi@onal form of marke@ng, where the company reaches out directly to customers
and tries to generate interest in their product or service. Cold calls or telemarke@ng
are two examples of outbound lead genera@on strategies.
Companies focused on lead genera@on tend to use both inbound and outbound
strategies.
Inbound strategies can some@mes lead to faster conversion; so many businesses
focus the bulk of their marke@ng efforts there.
Let’s look at 7 ways you can improve your inbound marke@ng efforts to get results.

3. 1. Add, improve, or refresh your
lead magnet
A lead magnet (also known as an ethical bribe) is a free product or service that you give
away, or sell for a very low price, in order to generate a customer. Every lead magnet
should be built around solving a problem for your future customer and, ideally, would
offer a way to solve the problem fast. Even beBer would be a done-for-you component to
the lead magnet that solves the problem FOR the client. Let’s say that you were having a
problem with ground bees at your house. Would you be interested in a lead magnet that
tells you how to get rid of ground bees safely? Most likely yes. But would you be MORE
interested in a lead magnet that tells you how to get rid of ground bees, and offers to do
it for you (even if at a fee)? More likely yes. Most of us would opt for the ”done for us”
service all things being equal.

4. 2. People over search engines
Page @tles, header tags, keywords – these are all important, but speaking
directly to your audience is more important. SEO is a discovery strategy; in that
it can help your audience find you. But wri@ng for the search engines doesn’t
necessarily create rapport with your visitor, and your visitor is the one who is
going to buy something- not the search engines. So while a strong SEO strategy
can bring you an audience; you can generate one yourself by giving value and
mee@ng your clients where they already are, such as social media.

5. 3. Have something to offer next
If you are an expert in your topic, you very likely have a lot of ideas for classes,
programs, and services to provide your client. You can use any of these to drive
more sales, and to generate more inbound marke@ng results. Every piece of
content you create in your business can be put through the 10x cycle- which is
where it becomes useful in 10 ways. So, for instance, this blog post could
become a podcast and video. I could use this same blog post for an infographic,
and I could break it out into social media updates, and I could turn it into an
ecourse, and I could make it a free-standing lead magnet- just for starters. With
the push towards longer-form content, it just makes sense to get as much use
out of all your content as possible.

6. 4. Be consistent
When you begin your inbound marke@ng efforts, s@ck with them. Build an
inbound marke@ng process that you can repeat over and over. As I write about
in my internet marke@ng book – you only need about 3-5 marke@ng strategies
you do consistently in order to have a full and thriving business. But consistency
is key to inbound marke@ng- people have to know, like, and trust you before
they will do business with you.

7. 5. Market in various formats
When you are building your inbound marke@ng plan, it makes sense to market
in a mix of formats- such as wriBen, audio, video, and visuals. This means you
want to offer your content in mul@ple forms, in order to aBract the maximum
number of people. Everyone has a preferred way to access content, and you
want to make sure your content is available to them in their chosen format.

8. 6. Go where the people are
As I tell my clients, building an audience from scratch- star@ng from nothing- is
one of the most difficult ways to build your business. Instead, seek out
opportuni@es to collaborate with others. Write guest blog posts, contribute to
groups on LinkedIn or Facebook, look for places to share your message and
offer value. Again, you will need to do this consistently in order to get results.

9. 7. Provide amazing service and
products
When you give a great deal of value, and do this in a way that is honest, and transparent,
you will create a good reputa@on. And in the online world, reputa@on maBers. People are
more likely to refer others to you if they believe you to be credible, trustworthy, and
effec@ve. Do what you can to provide highly valuable and effec@ve services so your
exper@se aBracts more clients.
These seven strategies can help you engage, aBract, and delight your customers.