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Cameron 
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Share According to Hubspot, roughly 65% of businesses say generating traffic and leads is their biggest marketing challenge. When it comes to running a business, you should expect a set of challenges every time a goal is in place. A goal for a majority of businesses is to attain more leads. What a lot of businesses don’t know is that attaining leads from anywhere is one approach, but a weak one. Instead, quality leads should be the goal, instead of general ones. Why? Because when you have a quality lead, they have been put through a process where their need matches your service much better, which turns them into a qualified lead. Take, for example, owning a storefront business. If you hire an employee to stand outside and attempt to bring in potential customers in hopes of a sale, those customers that enter your business will be a general lead, not a qualified lead. Now, if a customer walks in on their own free will, they are likely searching for a solution to a specific need or want. This makes them a qualified lead and will bring you one step closer to closing a sale. That is an ideal customer and the one you should target to convert into a sale. The Inbound methodology consists of a specific set of stages that funnel your ideal buyers into a position where they may make a purchase with assurance to solve their need. Inbound marketing is a fairly new approach to attaining qualified leads through content marketing. If you’ve heard the phrase, “content is king,” that still holds to a degree, the only change now is to add “quality” in front of the phase. Although offering content is effective, offering quality content is even more effective and will raise your chances in receiving better leads.
When presenting content on your website, you might have a lot of readers, or very few. No matter the number, your business will not thrive if your readers are not taking action after reading your piece. This is how a business can determine if they are a qualified lead or not. They are aware of their problem and are looking for a solution through your call-to-action. A CTA is an actionable process to help bridge the gap between business and client, presenting the desired outcome of your ideal buyer. Remember, we want to help our readers achieve what they are looking for, not the other way around. Call-to-actions in the past might have been revolutionary, provoking the reader to click with a “Free Trial” or “Demo” button. Shooting the reader straight to where they want to go, but over time, this approach has lead to fewer and fewer clicks. Why? For many reasons, but a few juicy ones are because people generally get bored, and the fact that the call-to-action was not focused on the readers want or need. Convert meaning, change in form or function is an art in itself for marketers. Generalized CTAs have almost become an industry standard when producing content. This makes all the more reason to stand out and produce a hyper-focused call-to-action catering to the needs and wants of the reader (your idea buyer). Your new and improved call-to-action should be one step ahead of the reader and provide something free of value, not just something that is free and useless. You can sprinkle it throughout your piece or have it at the very bottom, like most. A good marketer will understand what the reader is going through when reading the article and thus, should be able to come up with a very clever statement to provoke the reader into submitting their information. There is also a second layer to consider when attempting to attain more quality leads. Aside from CTAs, try providing something additional that is free to the reader, like an eBook, eGuide, or Template. These forms of premium content can be very useful to the reader and they still have to provide their information to attain this free gift of yours, so it’s a win-win! When attempting to acquire a potential customer’s information, only require the necessary information so that the process may be quick and smooth. The longer it takes the person to fill something out, the less of a chance you will have of them inputting their information. People are generally lazy, so if you can allow a simple way to grab their information, the better off you will be. Generally, the best pieces of information to grab would be:
According to Pinpoint Market Research and Anderson Jones PR, 93% of B2B buying processes start with an online search. Because the internet is so valuable and enriched with information, Google+ has turned into a powerhouse and became the number one search engine. When someone has a problem, they typically resort to finding a solution on their own before asking someone for help, thus resorting to Google search. This is where Inbound marketing thrives and aims to convert meaning, changing visitors into quality leads. But, that is only one piece of the Inbound puzzle. It can be hard to track who is visiting your website and where they are going. A smart approach would be to utilize Google analytics. This powerful tool will help you understand where your visitors are going after they view your page, along with other key performance indicators that can help direct your approach to gaining more traffic to your website. The more traffic your content received , the high chances of having them click on your call-to-action, and once the visitor submits their information, you can officially call them a quality lead!
Let’s face it, It can be challenging as it is to attract new visitors and gain more eyes on your content or website. It can also be challenging to convert the viewer into a lead. But, the hard work isn’t over yet. Each stage of the Inbound process is important in its own way, but one important factor that is taken for granted is to close the deal. Just because one has a quality lead does not mean that lead will close into a sale. This is where you are able to hand off that lead to your sales team in order to close to deal. Becoming clever in your messaging and tuning into your ideal buyer’s wants and needs will skyrocket you ahead of your competition. It can typically take a whole team to execute Inbound marketing for your growing business. Creating the content, publishing it and managing it can take up a lot of time and resources when one might not have it. We at Responsify help businesses thrive through production of strategic premium content so that they can become a lead generating machine. We have worked with and helped many marketing and sales professionals get back on track with content without breaking the bank. If you are curious to learn more about how you can create clever messaging so that you can convert your site visitors into quality leads, schedule a 1-on-1 strategy session with one of our specialists today!
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