Inbound leads are a critical marketing tool in sales as they allow you to bring in potential customers looking for your services who already have an idea of what your company offers. However, inbound lead generation isn’t easy, and you will have put in the time to curate a steady stream of inbound links. If successful, inbound lead generation to your website and blog can greatly increase conversion rates. This can help turn visitors to your website into customers.

The fact is that traditional marketing strategies are not enough as shoppers increasingly research products and services online. This makes it critical that you have solid web content with a focus on inbound lead generation. Successful inbound lead generation must include both organic and referral traffic. Organic traffic is generated by search engine results, and referral traffic occurs when users find your site through social media, your blog, or another website. To help you get the most out of your website and increase your chances of turning visitors into customers, here are 5 tips to help you get more inbound leads.

1. Develop High-Quality Content

In order to generate inbound leads, it is critical that you develop a blog and continually update it with high-quality content. It is not enough to merely throw out underdeveloped content and call it a blog. You should focus on creating well-thought-out content that establishes yourself as a thought leader in your field. More importantly, you need to make sure that the content you create is of value to consumers. Think about what customers may want to know before enlisting the services of a company in your industry. You should then develop content that thoughtfully answers these questions.

Creating content that provides value to readers will increase the odds that organic traffic will be directed to your blog as consumers search for answers to the questions you are addressing. Having found your content to be useful rather than overly salesy, there is a good chance that readers will visit your website.  Having established yourself as a knowledgeable, trustworthy source of information, they will turn to your website to find solutions to their initial problem. However, in order to maintain relevance, it is important that you continue to update your blog frequently.

2. Focus on SEO

Of course, even if you develop quality content that provides value to consumers, they may never see it if your website and blog are not SEO-friendly. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of using specialized strategies to increase the quality and quantity of traffic to your website. Implementing the proper SEO strategy is critical in order to ensure that your content is prioritized by Google’s search algorithms. This will help ensure that your content ranks towards the top of the first page of results on Google searches in order to improve inbound lead generation to your website.

Unfortunately, ensuring that your website is SEO-friendly is no easy task, as there is no one right way to do it. However, simple steps that you can take to improve your website’s SEO ranking includes ensuring that your content is easy to read and utilizes the right keywords. You should also make sure that your content is broken up with headers, subheaders, and images for scanability. If you are finding it difficult to get your website to rank high in Google searches, you may benefit from partnering with a lead generation partner who can help you fine-tune your website for SEO.

3. Expand Your Email List

One of the most valuable inbound lead generation strategies at your disposal is email marketing, which makes it critical that you focus on developing your email list. The fact is that no one likes spam marketing emails, and people are likely to delete –or even block– emails from companies that are unsolicited. However, targeted email marketing directed at people who have signed up for your newsletter is an invaluable means of generating inbound leads. People who have signed up for your newsletter are already familiar with your brand, and they are likely to click on a link, or even make a purchase, if they receive informative content from you that is tailored to meet their needs.

Targeted email marketing is known to provide a substantial ROI, which is why it is critical that you use all of your other inbound marketing strategies to funnel people to your email list. You can do this by adding opt-in forms on your website and social media posts that encourage visitors to subscribe to your email list. You should consider making this opt-in mutually beneficial by offering something in exchange for signing up for your email list like a coupon or a free eBook or webinar. Once you have developed your email list, be careful to only send out carefully curated content. No one wants to be spammed with endless sales pitches. Your emails should provide value in some way to readers that will encourage them to visit your blog, website, or social media pages.

4. Create a YouTube Channel

Believe it or not, YouTube is one of the biggest, and most popular, search engines in the world. Many consumers would prefer to watch a short video to find an answer to their question than have to read if it provides the same information. You can then take advantage of a massive platform, and potentially generate leads for your website, if you create a YouTube channel for your company. Use your YouTube channel as a platform to provide advice, answer frequently asked questions, and highlight new products/services and industry news. The aim of your YouTube channel should be to convert viewers into email subscribers. This makes it important that you provide a newsletter opt-in link at the end of your videos and encourage people to subscribe if they enjoyed your content.

5. Have a Clear Call to Action

While inbound marketing content should not be aggressive or overly pushy, it is still important that each piece of content you create includes a clear call to action (CTA). A good CTA will encourage people to sign up for your email list and/or visit your website. CTAs can be an extremely useful way to get users to engage with your brand without being overly intrusive. Just make sure that you clearly convey the value consumers will receive from joining your email list, as they are unlikely to arbitrarily subscribe to your email list if they do not see a perceived benefit in doing so.

Inbound lead generation should be a critical component of your company’s marketing strategy in order to maximize your website’s conversion rates and build/maintain your customer base. Contact us for more advice on how you can generate additional inbound leads for your business as well as to find out how GrowthLabs can help you expand your company’s reach.