An inbound marketing strategy is not just a marketing tactic, it is much more than that. Specifically, it is a kind of ecosystem, that is, it is a set of digital marketing techniques that seeks to attract traffic to a website or blog and gain visibility on the Internet for generating leads and attracting customers .
Therefore, with an inbound marketing strategy you will be able to build a long-term relationship of trust with the user , accompanying them throughout the sales funnel, offering them value. And it is precisely on this path and accompaniment where a series of long-term online marketing strategies and techniques have to be applied, which are what will provide sustainable growth over time .
What is a long-term strategy in inbound marketing?
An inbound marketing strategy is a complex methodology. If you think about it, the process of this technique consists of:
- Attract qualified traffic to a blog or website with quality content.
- Convert these users into leads .
- Accompany and prepare the lead (through a sequence of emails) from the highest part of the funnel to the lowest (this is the one that is closest to the purchase) to convert.
So this entire process requires a medium and long-term strategy. This means that actions must be designed to achieve lasting results after 6 months or a year. So they are not quick actions that are achieved from one day to the next (these, for example, are used for specific actions and are short-term strategies).
By this I do not mean that short-term strategies cannot be used in an inbound strategy. In fact, combining short-term strategies with long-term strategies will be key to streamlining the attraction and conversion process .
Imagine that you implement an inbound marketing strategy. Is it possible that you will get leads the next day? Yes. You may get some if you target the right audience, if you have created valuable content for it and spread it on the right channels. Therefore, you can get potential customers quickly.
Now, the other part of the process remains: how do we convert those potential customers or leads into real customers? If you use powerful marketing software like Hubspot , you are likely to close a customer. But why does one convert and the rest don’t? The reason is simple: the majority of users you attract to your website do not know you and need time to discover who you are, what you offer and why they should buy from you and not from your competition. This is where long-term digital marketing strategies come in, the ones that last into the future and add value.
5 long-term inbound strategies that drive the growth of your company
Remember that the engine in inbound marketing is to exchange value between brand and user to generate trust and strengthen the relationship with them. You offer good content and they provide you with their personal data. Afterwards, you keep offering them interesting content and they spend time on your business. This relationship with time is narrowing and thanks to it lasting results are obtained that add value in the long term .
Let’s see what are those main long-term online marketing strategies that you should work on to achieve trust and lasting relationships with your clients:
1. Research keywords related to your business
You cannot start writing content for your blog, in order to attract qualified users, without previously doing a keyword research related to your business
After selecting the keyword , do a Google search and see who is in the top positions . Your mission will be to make content better than that (adding more relevant information, more visual content or placing the keyword in more places within the text or in subtitles) to get the highest number of organic visits. To do this, you must position yourself among the top three positions in Google.
2. Optimize your content
Based on the selected keyword, you should optimize the content as much as possible. To do this, you should take into account some content SEO issues . The keyword must be included in:
- The title of the post.
- Some H2 and H3.
- The URL (this must be seo-friendly).
- The alt-text of the featured image and the rest of the images that appear within the text.
- The first paragraph (this should be added as naturally as possible).
- The title and metadescripton.
To help you in this task, it is recommended that you install the Yoast Seo plugin in WordPress , which will allow you to know what improvements you should make to get your content optimized.
On the other hand, in Hubspot, the recommendations are found in the same CMS when you are editing an article, in the “Optimization” tab.
3. Execute a guest post strategy
Receiving links from other authoritative websites will help you increase your reputation and get a better ranking. And this in turn will help you get more organic visits and more leads.
To start your guest posting strategy you must contact other bloggers in your sector and establish a medium and long-term relationship to carry out win-win collaborations.
4. Analyze the keywords that best position
Keep track of the keywords that convert the most or get the most visits, and make improvements to make them work even better.
5. Detect errors and draw up an action plan to make improvements
To detect errors you must look at some metrics , which you can divide by actions or strategies. For example, to analyze the content of the offers sent to your target, you must look at the visits received on the landing page , the number of conversions, the conversion rate and interactions on social networks.
Instead, to analyze your email campaign, you must track the frequency of sending, the click-open rate, the bounce rate or the percentage of subscribers who unsubscribe.
By analyzing all these metrics, you will be able to draw up an action plan to make improvements and focus on those actions that need to be further defined to achieve your goals within the timeframe that you have set for yourself.