Are You Looking for Pennies or Benjamins With Your Inbound Marketing?

If you're reading our blog, you probably have a decent idea of what inbound marketing is? Don't worry, if you don't we won't be mad at you. To keep it simple, inbound marketing is generating customers by ensuring that you're being found when that person is looking for your product, service, etc. With inbound marketing you'll gain the attention of these individuals through mediums such as search engines or social media and then your website will guide them through the process of eventually turning into a conversion (lead, sale, sign-up). It's different from "interruption marketing" in which you just throw your advertising out there for everyone to see and hope that someone bites.

Many business owners, execs, sales people, etc. love the idea of inbound marketing, but it's not always easy to understand what truly matters. There is too much emphasis placed on quantity vs quality. Sure, everyone wants more, but sacrificing the quality of the website traffic that you get is not worth it for quantity.

Start thinking about your website traffic like this...would you rather have a bunch of pennies, or a stack of $100 bills?

If you are getting a lot of website traffic, but it is just junk traffic, what is the value to you? With that type of traffic you'll get little to no sales, conversions, leads, etc. Even if they check out a couple pages on your site, they are still casual visitors. Same thing applies with social media. If you just try to grow your followers just to have followers, it's like having a bunch of pennies. Maybe you'll get a little bit out of it here or there, but it will be slow and painful.

So what's the better thought process? Get better traffic and better followers. Sure, easier said than done, but with effort it will happen.

So where do you start? If you're already involved in some sort of online marketing, you should start with data. Pull Google Analytics reports or have someone do Analytics reporting for you. You'll want to pay attention to 2 things.

First, look at the data from visitors that are already high performing. These would be the people that come to your website and make a purchase, fill out a conversion form, sign up for your email lists, and so on. Find out how these visitors got to your website and the general behavior that took place when they were there. These will be your model. Look to improve these, but also take note so you can use these visitor types as a template.

Second, find the visitors that could be high performing. These would be the ones that convert at a high rate, you just struggle getting people on your site from these search terms or social platforms. Focus on these keywords and expand. Create better content, create landing pages, and create your conversion opportunity. When I say better content, please take that seriously. Write content that is useful for a reader...think about the search engines second. Remember, take a look at what is already working and mimic that to a certain extent. It might take adjustments, tweaking and time, but by looking at lower volume, high quality visitors and increasing those, you'll starting yielding better traffic instead of just casual traffic.