Is your brand traveling the highway of inbound marketing, or are you veering off for side trips on country roads? Keeping focused on the road map that leads to the conversion of customers is vital if you want to attract and drive traffic to your website. Inbound marketing is what you do to make it easy for visitors and potential customers to find you, as opposed to outbound marketing where you are going after the customers. With inbound marketing you are leading them in through various channels, down a highway of information and engagement that ends at the final destination of them buying your product and/or services.
Let’s take a look at the road map to see what on-ramps online users will travel to get on the highway, where they follow the road signs that take them to the final destination: your brand’s website.
On-Ramps:
These are the channels used to attract people online to get on the highway where your content is found. The channels are where your brand presence is online. They consist of various social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+ and so on. What you post on these channels will lead back to your blog and website and encourage people to actually take the on-ramp that leads to your site. What you post on these sites must be geared to these travelers and their interests. You also have to engage with them so you can start to build a relationship. You need to give them a reason to come to your blog and website. Search engines also lead to this highway so be sure you are using keywords that are strong and will bring in the people you want as customers.
Highway:
The highway is your content on your company blog. People have come to your blog and are now ready to take their involvement up a step. This should be a place where they can learn and interact with the community and you. You don’t want them to get on the highway and then not have any signs to help them along the way. They need to know what to do and what you can do for them. Keep them from veering off on a side road or bypassing your website because they didn’t see a reason to travel to the final destination. It’s up to you to make the trip interesting and engaging for these travelers.
Road Signs:
These are the methods your brand uses to keep people traveling on the highway to the final destination of your website. Road signs can be educational content, information, contests, videos, promotions, submission forms, calls-to-action, or anything that will encourage them to keep moving on down the highway. Interaction with you is important as it will keep them engaged and prepare them for buying into your brand.
Final Destination:
This is your website where you convert the travelers who have arrived at their destination. Once you have these travelers or leads at your website you want to have them become customers. As you work to convert them into customers, you should be keeping track of data and analytics so you know how they got there and what you can do to improve your conversion rate. And even as they become customers, you still need to cater to them and interact with them. This will give you loyal followers and brand advocates which will bring more travelers to your website.
ICUC can help your brand develop and maintain your online social media presence as well as your blog and online communities. We can help manage and moderate these sites, providing analytics and reports that will grow brand presence and loyalty. We provide content moderation, community management, monitoring & listening, and social ROI services.
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If you’re interested to learn more about ICUC – check out our website, or please feel free to email us marketing@icucmoderation.com.
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Highways