10 Invaluable Inbound Marketing Methods

By Author: Abe Cherian
Total Articles: 37
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According to a college essay’s best friend, Wikipedia, inbound marketing is defined as: “...a marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers.”

“But Abe, isn’t that the point of all advertising,” you ask?

Unlike traditional forms of advertising, inbound marketing is all about engaging potential customers through valuable content, social media and similar methods.

Instead of traditional forms of marketing, such as newspapers, television commercials, radio ads and direct mail—all of which require you to break through prospects’ “sales barriers”—inbound marketing has become a lot more powerful.

In this article, you’ll discover 10 ways to use inbound marketing.

I encourage you to read this list, bookmark it, and make an effort to apply at least one new approach to your business each week.

Here are your 10 ways to use inbound marketing for your business:

Inbound Marketing Method #1 - Provide Useful and Interesting Content On Your Blog

The great thing about content, is that it’s “sticky”.

Instead of constantly relying ...
... on getting your prospects and customers to read blatant sales pitches, content is more engaging and actually adds value.

Through content, you are able to demonstrate your knowledge, educate your market about problems you are able to solve, or simply build some extra “good will” with your prospects.

To a point, using content as an inbound marketing method is also a way to invoke the almighty power of the “law of reciprocity”: doing something positive creates a natural desire to return the favor.

In business, this could very likely be in the form of a sale.

Inbound Marketing Method #2 - Social Bookmarking

It’s no secret that social media can quickly launch your business (and/or content) to “viral” status.

Every time you create content, remember to submit it to all the major social media sites. This helps rank your content and increases your chances of it being found by others in your market.

You can use sites like Ping.fm to quickly update all your social networking accounts at once.

Inbound Marketing Method #3 - Repurpose Your Content In Multiple Formats For Broader Impact

Location, location, location...

It doesn’t just apply to real estate, anymore.

By creating content and then packaging it in different formats, you have a lot more leverage in your marketing.

For example:

If you are interviewed or conduct an interview with someone else, you could take the audio and create a transcript of everything that’s said.

Suddenly, you not only have the ability to upload the original content to audio sharing sites (podcasts, etc.), you also have a PDF to submit to PDF sharing sites.

If you really wanted to take it a step further, you could first transcribe the audio into Powerpoint (Microsoft) or Pages (Apple) and then export your slides as a PDF.

Doing so will give you: the original audio, a PDF transcript, and slides.

(There are also sites specifically dedicated to uploading/sharing slides!)

You might say that every piece of content is in fact like another piece of virtual real estate you can create for your business.

Location, location, location!

Inbound Marketing Method #4 - Guest Posts On Related Sites

One of the quickest ways to reach out to your target market is to go where they’re already hanging out.

If you can find sites that have discussions about things that are relevant to your market and your business, it never hurts to offer creating content as a guest contributor.

You can use appearances on multiple sites to share your knowledge and position yourself (and/or your company) as an authority in your niche.

Inbound Marketing Method #5 - Submit To Article Submission Sites

Another way to tap into huge sources of established traffic, is article directories.

These sites are usually highly-regarded by search engines, due to constantly being updated with content by users.

As a result, you can rank nicely for many different levels of keywords with enough effort.

At the end of each article you submit, you would add your author resource (bio) box, which includes a link back to whatever site you want to attract people to.

Like guest posts and other content in general, you can use your profiles on these sites to further establish yourself as an expert in your niche.

Inbound Marketing Method #6 - Forum Post Links

There are two ways forum posts can benefit you...

First, by their very nature, forums are always focused on a specific area of interest. In other words, they’re a perfect resource for communicating with whatever niche you’re in.

On forums, you’re usually allowed to put whatever you want in your “signature” - a block of space below your posts that can contain links for other members to learn more about you.

So as you post to forums, you create mini pieces of content that give value to other members. The more you post, the stronger your reputation and the more people will naturally want to hear more about what you have to say.

On top of that, the other benefit of forums is their (usually) high rankings in search engines.

From an SEO perspective, that means links coming from the forums have a high value to search engines. By putting links in your posts and signature file, you can boost your rankings for whatever keywords you’re targeting.

Just be sure not to spam your links, since it’s very strongly frowned upon by both community members and moderators.

You can find a list of forums, listed by category, at Big-Boards.com.

Inbound Marketing Method #7 - Exceptional Customer Service

In your own personal experiences, have you ever had a crummy experience with a customer service rep?

Kind of leaves you not wanting to continue to give them your business, doesn’t it?

A lot of people make the assumption that customer service is nothing more than answering questions and making sure projects and orders are taken care of.

The truth is, you can make your customer service an experience.

Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, has previously set many great examples of this.

In a video Sivers put out, he shares stories of CD Baby (which he eventually sold) putting extra items in their customers’ packages.

But not just any items...

On the company’s order form, one of the fields customers can fill in is their answer to “is there anything else you need?” (or something to that affect).

For kicks, many customers would put random requests in the box.

To their surprise, however, CD baby would often include them in the package.

Two fun examples are a pack of a customer’s favorite gum and another user, who requested either a rubber or real-life squid!

Both of these were provided...

Inbound Marketing Method #8 - Start An Affiliate Program For Your Products Or Services

Who doesn’t like to make extra money?

By having your own affiliate program in place, you can (and most likely will) attract others who are willing to promote your offers for you.

In return, your affiliates receive a percentage of each sale.

Inbound Marketing Method #9 - Interviews & Other Media Appearances

By nature, many people trust the opinions of publishers and media companies (especially news channels).

If you’re able to position yourself to be invited as a guest to be interviewed or contribute material to a major publication, it’s almost impossible for your credibility not to skyrocket.

Plus, your appearance can very easily intrigue others to learn more about you and your company.

Inbound Marketing Method #10 - Interesting Videos and Distribution To Video Sites

It used to be that you’d have to shell out hundreds-of-thousands (if not millions) of dollars to create a video and launch it to the masses.

Today, however, sites like YouTube has completely levelled the playing field.

Suddenly, the video you shot of your cat chasing a laser beam has just as much potential to create buzz, as a professionally-produced commercial.

Lives have been changed (in some cases saved), partnerships have formed, and stars have been born - all through YouTube videos alone.

Think of how you can use video for your company and create a fun, engaging video to submit to video sites.

The more emotion you can trigger within your viewers, the stronger the impact your video will have.

Controversy, empathy, humor, even anger - all of these and more have previously been used to great success in video marketing.

As an example, here is a link to a video that HubSpot (the company that coined the term “inbound marketing”) created to market their services through a funny song (video) about inbound marketing itself.

Here it is, for your viewing pleasure:

"You Oughta Know Inbound Marketing"

Don’t forget to bookmark this article for future reference!

Stream-4 is "website promotion done-for-you service", for online business owners and Internet marketers. Abe Cherian and his team of Internet Marketing professionals at Multiple Stream Media provides this comprehensive, highly effective, result oriented, and affordable service which includes, everything from unique article writing, blog writing, seo service, submission service, link building service and more. A must see if you want long term online marketing success.