Recently at Blue Frog, we have gained a lot of interest in both social media marketing and inbound marketing. More and more Des Moines businesses are realizing how important it is to be marketing their business online. Whether that's via social media, their website, being found on the first page of Google, or any other type of way that a potential or current customer can find a business on the internet.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the Inbound Marketing Philosophy, take a look at that attached link. To sum inbound marketing up, it is the idea of "pull marketing." People are going online to search for products/services. It should be your goal to be on the first page of keyword results, because 75% of search engine users never go past the first page of results! If that searcher happens to click on your website URL, you have attracted them to your website and that is a small portion of inbound marketing!
Outbound marketing is "push marketing." TV commercials, radio ads, billboards. These marketing methods are not attracting qualified leads like inbound marketing does. Outbound marketing messages are pushed out to everyone and can be a HUGE waste on money. Not to mention it's very hard to keep track of your ROI. With inbound marketing, people are looking to solve a problem and therefore they come to your website to get their problem solved from your products/services.
Ok, so let's say your website is SEO friendly and your website is ranked in the top 3 for a lot of keywords, GREAT! You also have great content on your website and Calls-To-Action to get visitors to fill out forms on Landing Pages for lead generating, right? However, you're not driving much traffic to your website, therefore you are not generating many leads. So how do we drive traffic to your website? With social media marketing!
This begins to answer the blog question: How do social media and inbound marketing go together? Well, social media is all about content creation, interacting with potential/current customers, and driving traffic to your website. You may have posts or images that attract people. If you post correctly on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn you should include a link within that post to drive traffic to your website.
Example
1. I post this message on all of our social media platforms: "83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business. Is social media right for you? Click here for more information- www.bluefrogdm.com #DesMoines #SocialMedia"
2. If this post catches the attention of people or if they want to learn more about social media marketing, they're going to click on that link. Side note: I utilized #hashtags for more visibility for those who do not follow Blue Frog on social media. People can search for specific hashtags that people are interested in on social media platforms. Therefore, the Blue Frog post will appear in their search results who searched for a specific topic or hashtag.
3. Once they have reached the social media marketing web page from the post link, it is time for inbound marketing to work. That stranger from social media is now a visitor on our web page. Inbound marketing begins to work when we capture that visitor from the Call-To-Action button that has an offer.
4. If that offer interests the visitor, they will click on the Call-To-Action and enter their information on the Landing Page's form. That visitor is now a LEAD!
What's next? We will reach out to that lead or have an automated email sent to them for more information to help nurture that lead.
After time has passed and that person is now a customer (thanks to inbound marketing and a great sales team for closing the lead) we can cycle back to social media. We will continue the relationship with that customer when they reach out to us via social media. That customer can also help promote our business by sharing our content with their network.
Another way inbound marketing and social media go together is blogging! Blogging is a great way to create content for your website. Once a blog is created and published to your website, our inbound marketing software also pushes that information to your social media accounts for more visibility.
There is a lot more to inbound marketing and social media marketing, but that is a small example of the cycle of the two marketing efforts. You need a great website that can be found on Google, but you also need social media to drive traffic to the website. Social media and inbound marketing can work for everyone if it is done correctly.
For more information on how social media and inbound marketing can work for your business, email us at sales@bluefrogdm.com and we would be happy to answer any questions. We also have FREE eBooks on this Resources page that are available to you.