Inbound marketing has a very specific formula: produce good content and it will attract leads (including more qualified leads). It’s a tried and true recipe for success that has worked for hundreds of businesses in many different fields.
If no one is downloading your content offers, your inbound marketing methods are lacking in some way. Here are some possible reasons for your inbound struggles:
Your blogs aren’t valuable
You know that the primary purpose of your blogs is to bring people in – your articles are one of the keys to the whole “attract” part of the inbound marketing formula. But they also have a secondary purpose that’s quite important: they need to be valuable. And how does a blog become valuable? By being informative.
When you write blog articles that are informative, you are accomplishing two different things: 1. You’re establishing your credibility in your market/field by displaying your knowledge and insight. 2. You’re starting off your relationship with a visitor in a positive manner; you’ve already provided them with value without asking for anything in return.
Ensure that your blog articles are on relevant, popular topics and that you conduct ample research while writing them. If your visitors aren’t interested in your blog articles, why would they be interested in your content offers?
Traffic isn’t high enough
Inbound marketing (and marketing in general) is all a numbers game. Only a small percentage of your visitors will become leads, and only a small percentage of those leads will become customers. Regardless of how great your content is, less than 10 percent of your visitors are going to actually download a content offer. Therefore, it behooves you to have as much traffic as possible.
Are you doing everything you can to boost traffic? Have you identified the best keywords for your market/field? Are you utilizing those keywords often, including them in both the headline and body of blog articles? Are you promoting your website and content through your social media channels? If you want to maximize the success of your inbound marketing strategies, you need to boost your traffic any way you can.
Your content offers need work
Even if your blogs are fantastic and your traffic is good, you still need quality content offers to entice visitors to provide their contact information in exchange for them. Your content offers need to be both interesting and useful to your potential customers. They will require considerable effort and a larger time commitment than your blogs, and their quality should reflect that. Your content offers should also cover major topics in your market/field that you know many visitors will be interested in.
Another tip: mix up the format of your content offers. Some people prefer to digest their information in different ways. Consider using eBooks, white papers and even infographics for your content offers. You never know what might register with your audience. The correct format for your content offer is whichever format will get downloaded the most.
Topics: Inbound Marketing
