From getting used to staying indoors to practicing social distancing, the Coronavirus outbreak has literally flipped our lives upside down. Businesses have not been spared either.
But all is not lost. Many businesses are continuing to stay on course, even with limited budgets and reduced staff. In fact, companies are adapting their inbound marketing strategies to suit the current landscape. This includes reviewing their marketing arsenal to leverage effective new ways of reaching customers.
With inbound marketing, how you create and share content with your audiences really matters. The current marketing paradigm is delicate, and there’s less room for blunders. We’re going to explore some best practices to help you relay the right message and build a stellar brand profile.
Understanding Inbound Marketing
Before we deep dive into best practices, let’s start with a brief explanation of inbound marketing.
At its core, inbound marketing is a strategy for attracting customers by offering value, instead of pushing a brand, service, or product to earn customers. The main objective is to deliver solutions to specific problems.
The strategy requires a combination of effective marketing techniques and channels to work, including SEO, social media, and content marketing. When used optimally, these techniques can increase your reach and drive quality traffic, thus boosting your engagement and conversions.
Inbound marketing is useful because it allows you to provide answers to customer questions which helps build reputation, authority, and trust.
1. Content Marketing
Cancellations of trade shows, conferences, and in-person events due to COVID-19 have limited physical marketing opportunities. In response, marketers have scaled up their content production to cast wider nets.
However content creation shouldn’t be done just to create a certain number of marketing materials or to fill your blog. Your content needs to be engaging while providing solutions to your customers’ needs. Whether you’re creating a blog post, how-to guide, or whitepaper, the content must inform, educate, and inspire your audiences.
Before creating any content, take the time to understand your audience, including their interests, needs, preferences, questions, and problems. Then optimize and personalize your content based on your findings. The content can be in the form of a blog post, webinar, video, infographic, or e-book.
Related: Optimizing Your Form Strategy Where User Experience Meets Need for Information
2. Social Media
Traffic on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat has skyrocketed during this time. With more people spending time at home, social media has offered much-needed solace for overcoming the effects of lockdowns. The new kid on the block, Tik Tok, is quickly becoming people’s favorite, offering marketers a whole new platform for connecting with millennials and Gen Zers.
Once you’ve created your content, choosing the right social media platform will help share it with your customers. For the most impact, you need to determine the times and channels when and where your target audiences are most active. A study by Sprout revealed that people are most active on Facebook on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday between 10 am and 11 am.
In addition to improving your engagement and interaction, social media should also compliment your SEO efforts. It’s one of the crucial signals Google uses when ranking search results. Be sure to audit your top-performing content on social media and make adjustments as needed.
3. Search Engine Optimization
How can you rate your website’s visibility on search engines? You can answer this question well by taking the time to review your Google Analytics data. If your web traffic is stagnant or inconsistent, then there might be some work to do on your website.
The current slowdown might just be an opportunity for you to audit your SEO. Apart from auditing, you also need to invest in both on-page and off-page SEO to take advantage of new keywords that might boost your traffic. Be sure to review your titles, meta descriptions, URLs, and headers and optimize them accordingly.
Also ensure each page on your website has enough content. Each page should have at least 400 words. Services pages should also be optimized with localized phrases. For example, a dentist in Atlanta can have a service page titled “Tooth Removal in Atlanta.” This ensures local clients are able to find your business online using such phrases.
If COVID-19 has disrupted your operations, be sure to update your information on Google My Business (GMB). Letting people know about your reduced hours or temporary closure is essential and can help you avoid negative reviews, which will affect your SEO.
4. Landing Pages
Have you revisited your landing pages recently? Landing pages tend to be forgotten once published.
If one doesn’t already exist, consider creating a landing page to collect subscribers and sell specific products or services. Landing pages are also great for special offers or short-term promotions. Alternatively, you can use landing pages to advertise new products when testing the market.
There are many customizable landing page templates online that are easy to set up. Just by doing a quick search you can find a handful of helpful landing page templates that will save you a lot of time.
5. Digital Advertising
Some companies have paused their digital advertising due to the outbreak after noticeable drops in ad clicks and traffic. But what some advertisers have not noticed is that the cost of advertising has also dropped by nearly 50%
Instead of pausing your PPC ads, it’s advisable to review your account and campaigns to take advantage of keywords generating traffic. To avoid overhauling your usual PPC strategy, you can create a new campaign with a different keyword mix for this period. Make sure to avoid high-traffic keywords that are costing you more to earn a lead.
Review your performance by device type and disable the device that’s not bringing in traffic. Small optimizations like this allow you to allocate your budget towards campaigns that are delivering valuable leads to your business.
Related: What to do When Creating B2B Buyer Personas
6. Remarketing
Also known as behavioral retargeting, remarketing basically involves targeting visitors who have previously interacted with your website or mobile app. With remarketing you can place ads in front of such visitors to boost your brand awareness or encourage them to make a purchase.
Remarketing uses cookies installed in a visitor’s browser to serve custom ads for products or services the visitor viewed or added to his or her cart without actually purchasing or converting. With remarketing ads, you can renew the visitor’s interest in the product or service, eventually getting them to place an order.
Final Thoughts
The Coronavirus outbreak might have hit us hard, but we believe that it’s wise to keep things running. Of course certain operations and activities might stall, but the Internet offers you an opportunity to continue growing certain aspects of your business.
With inbound marketing, you can easily implement tactics and strategies that will earn you new business. Keeping your marketing campaigns active protects your brand’s health and also improves your reputation and trust. All you need to do is to share content that offers value to your audiences, particularly during these difficult times.