What is inbound marketing?
Customers often don’t start out looking to buy right away.
Inbound marketing is the method through which businesses attract potential customers with content. Content can take many forms. It’s an investment that grows over time. The returns are greater for those who commit to curating and creating content that attracts attention.
Through relevant content businesses can create greater awareness of their products and services.
Customers often don’t start out looking to buy right away. Instead they set out to educate themselves before purchasing.
Inbound marketing helps to place your brand in front of customers as they begin their buying journey. Inbound marketing methods are friendlier to customers who are already used to being “sold” to.
What are some common tactics used in Inbound Marketing?
- A modern, well-designed website
- Blog articles written around solving customer's problems
- Informational graphics
- Search engine marketing
- Local marketing
- Social media posts and advertising
- Email newsletters
Businesses can earn the trust of customers by providing answers to their questions through content. As you deliver helpful information, you can position your product or service as a solution to their challenge or pain point.
Today, customers have access to all the information they need right in the palm of their hands.
Small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) must invest in digital tools to succeed in attracting customers online.
But for most SMBs, learning, troubleshooting and overseeing inbound marketing strategy takes time away from running your day-to-day business.
Don't know where to start?
Setting goals, creating content, selecting platforms and delivering on your strategy is where Red & Gray Marketing can help you.
Website Design
Small businesses need a website more than larger businesses.
The majority of people look to a company's website when evaluating them. Merely having a website ensures your business has a presence online. Customers expect you to have a website. The opportunity is clear: if your customers can't find you online, your business may be dismissed before ever being considered. In many cases your website is your first impression with customers.
Strong websites help your business' availability. Customers can find you online at any time - day or night - not just during business hours.
And when potential and actual customers find you, how will you connect? Digital contact forms give people an obstacle-free path to communication.
Your website must appear on the first page of search engine results to be effective. Search engine optimization (SEO) strategy helps to ensure your business ranks well and is discoverable on search results pages.
Through our discovery process, we help to identify your “ideal” customers. Once identified, we can then construct a mobile responsive website designed to convert visitors into potential customers, no matter what device they use.
Ready to improve your how your business looks online?
Red & Gray Marketing creates websites that are attractive to both potential customers and search engines alike.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing is as old as written communication itself. Since ink first touched paper, ideas and information have been used to both enlighten and persuade. Producers of these communications drew a following. And so, providing information that is valuable to your customer helps them become loyal to your brand.
Content crafted around customer problems - like blog posts, how-to guides, case studies & videos - helps potential customers during their journey to purchase.
By educating them on solutions to their problems, you create trust. When a customer converts, trust becomes established. You now have the opportunity to deliver even more solutions via content, further deepening the relationship. Content marketing is about your audience and what they care about. It builds credibility in your brand and positions your product your product or service as a solution.
Content marketing is fundamental to Inbound Marketing strategy. It's a long-game which takes a lot of work, but the results can be incredible.
Could your business use a boost in content output?
Red & Gray Marketing can work with you to define your audience, select the best platforms and to publish consistently.
Search Engine Optimization & Search Engine Marketing
Sounds similar? Both are forms of online marketing that take place in search engines.
Search Engine Optimization - or SEO as it is often shortened to, is the practice of improving your website's inclusion and ranking in search engine results for keywords and phrases related to your product or service. Search engines crawl the internet looking for information and catalog it. Once someone searches for specific terms through search engines, algorithms determine the web pages that are suggested.
These results are 'organic' or unpaid.
You can generate better search rankings through the wise use of keywords and descriptions in specific locations on your site pages (among other tactics). This is traffic that you can generate for free to your website.
Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is when businesses purchase paid advertisements that appear on search engine results pages. To succeed in SEM you need to offer a paid product or service.
Advertisers make bids on carefully selected keywords that closely match the product or service being offered with search engines. Ads are then created with the intent of appearing along with search engine results for queries containing those carefully selected keywords.
These are "pay per click" ads where an advertiser pays once someone clicks on the ads.
The value of SEM comes in presenting your product or service to a potential customer at the point when they are searching for, and possibly inclined to buy, that product or service.
SEO and SEM are foundational to your online marketing strategy.
Ready for your business to get found online?
Red & Gray Marketing can employ SEO tactics and design SEM campaigns so your business can take advantage of these powerful online tools.