As much as outbound marketing techniques have been thoroughly woven into society by way of billboards and commericals, inbound marketing/online marketing is also becoming seemingly complicated. Prospects don't want to be blatently marketed to, and an overly marketed site may cloud their vision and reason for coming to your page. This may turn them off and away from your site, and ultimately your services. Simplicity and a minimalistic approach is what consumers generally want in respect to most things. So, can you tune down your online marketing techniques and still yield positive results? YES.
Here are 5 ways you can simplify your online marketing strategy while converting leads into customers.
1. Optimize your website for the ESSENTIALS
In order for potential customers to find you, it is crucial that your site appears on the first page or two of the search engine results pages for your keywords. Design your website with your visitors in mind. From there optimize your meta description, headings and URLS. If your website is optimized for the most important factors, you can switch focus to various engagement tactics.
2. Make blogging and content customer focused
Focus your content around the customer. Instead of writing about what you want, solve a problem for your visitors. If someone leaves a comment on a past post asking for help on website optimization, take that as an opportunity to centralize a post around that topic. Doing something as simple as that adds a lot to your value and credibility. By listening to their needs and wants, you are also essentially letting them to most of the work for you. The more you listen to your audience, the easier your online marketing will become for you and will be less obtrusive to them.
3. Simplify content promotion
Your social media strategy and content promotion should be limited to a few key points, so that you can maintain a clear focus while staying clear from overloading your followers. Simplify your content promotion through these 3 steps:
Tell your story
- Use the social media platforms that will easily and seamlessly convey your brand's identity to your target audience. If this is on Twitter, get tweeting! If it's on Facebook, learn how you can optimize your campaign to make those connections last.
Engage with content not your product or service. You can easily engage through content by:
- Focusing on quality over quantity
- More content marketing with a purpose and less sales talk
- More engagement and less self-promotion
Be diligent and purposeful
- Organize your social media goals. How can you grow your fan base and keep them engaged?
- Cut down on the clutter and make your band, for what it is, shine through. Your content needs to be consistent and compelling so that it will eventually lead to an action.
By following this formula and interchanging the content to suit your audience, you will have an easier time making the effort to connect and promote.
4. Put visitors in charge
Design your site with the visitors in mind, not the end goal of making a sale. Create real, valuable experiences that make people want to engage and delve deeper into your site. Make it user-friendly and easy to navigate. Give them a way to opt out if they wish. Don't focus on numbers and analytics too much and think more about the needs of consumers.
5. Simplify your over all strategy
Ultimately, more focus on real engagement with potential customers will help simplify and organize your strategy. If you understand what they want, they will eventually understand what you can offer through engagement. Discover on what platforms your audience spends most of their time and focus on these areas for execution.
Each client or customer has their own set of goals and measurments of success, and it has been noted several times throughout this post to keep your visitor in mind and base most of your online marketing around their needs. If you can learn to do this, your online marketing will become simplified and easier. This means that you CAN simplify your online marketing strategy and still yield positive results - for both you and your customer!