The Mad Men in your face marketing strategies of days gone by are as stale as the last package of Ramen noodles in a kitchen pantry. In this new age, and the new paradigm, savvy marketers go to great lengths to pull traffic gently inwards rather than trying to push it through loud flash-bang exaggeration. This new perspective is known as inbound marketing
The Pressure Is On To Break Old Habits
Buying ads and email lists, digging for leads with pop-ups and classifieds, or flooding submission sites with thinly disguised ads masquerading as articles is passe. Outbound call centers are dead. Some just don't know it.
Today, with over 200 million numbers listed with the U.S. National Do Not Call Registry, the current mind set of the typical customer should be pretty obvious. People hate being disturbed. It should go without saying, "Outbound is DEAD!"
Inbound Marketing With WordPress
Converting your WordPress blog or website into an inbound marketing powerhouse doesn't have to be difficult. In fact, WordPress is ideally suited for inbound marketing. You may just not know it yet.
WordPress represents fully 60% of the content management system (CMS) website deployment and roughly 25% of the installed website base -- of all types. That's impressive. But what does that mean to you. After all, you only have one website (or maybe a handful) so those big numbers, however impressive, really mean nothing to you. Or do they?
Because of it's huge, and still rapidly growing, installed base, WordPress has drawn the best and the brightest developers to work on new ideas and recent concepts. The current paradigm shift to inbound marketing has not gone unnoticed. Engagement is the present call-to-action. It's all about value added interaction.
Subscription-based email marketing, social media out reach, live or recorded webinar presentations, guest postings, and many more aspects of engagement are being practiced and supported by the development of plugins and third-party services created just for WordPress. You, with your WordPress website or blog, and a desire to pursue a more spiritual, heart-centered, form of marketing can readily embrace inbound marketing and find the support tools you need.
Inbound marketing options are limitless and by aligning WordPress plugin functionality with the interests of customers for the immediate, the uncluttered, and the ready-made, we can allow for ready conversion by the right clients or customers with greater ease and frequency.
WordPress Plugins Support Content Marketing
The term organic traffic has been around for a while. Free, mostly search generated, organic traffic is the foundation of inbound marketing. The key is in correctly handling that traffic when it gets to your site. As always, content is king.
Good content, well-written, authoritative, topical content, added frequently, is the baited hook that brings organic traffic in the first place. It then becomes the meal that engages those people when they arrive. Delivering quality information is the stuff that builds credibility and, with it, the trust that leads to conversion. That's how inbound marketing works.
Inbound Marketing Support: Yoast SEO
While engagement is the key, being found is the foundation. Yoast SEO is an easy-to-use solution for on-page search optimization that will have you writing good SEO-friendly posts right out of the gate in no time. I'll be detailing this plugin in a post and a blab shortly. But there is no time like the present. If you don't already have a copy on your site, download, install, and activate it. It's free.
Inbound Marketing Support: Mail Poet
Mailing lists have been abused, and much over-used, but they are still valid if you learn to deliver what your tribe really wants. Mail Poet is a top mailing list management plugin for WordPress. Get it. Learn it. Use it. It is foundational to contact engagement so learn to use it correctly -- not only technically, but ethically as well.
Inbound Marketing Support: S2Member Framework
Controlled access membership areas on your site provide a way of delivering, and monetizing, extra value to your site visitors. Delivering real value locks in loyal customers and turns them into advocates who will repeat and extend the circle of inbound marketing. That's a double win!
Inbound Marketing Support: Inbound Brew
As its name suggests, Inbound Brew is a plugin created to support the efforts of inbound marketers. From the WordPress plugin repository page: "The Inbound Brew automated marketing plugin will save you time and simplify your inbound marketing strategies and processes. Inbound marketing, also known as content marketing, allows you to create content that matters for the people that matter — Your leads."
Real Inbound Marketing
It isn't just getting people to open your email, to come to your website, or about being found in the SERPs for high-value keywords. Those things may be good, but if they are accomplished through tricks and even down right lies, you lose. Those days are over. Today you need great content backed by the authenticity that leads to trust.
Knowing your target market, your ideal customer or avatar, understanding their demographics, and actually valuing their time and needs, is what works today. Provide real information, understand and answer their real questions, provide something of real value and you will build a loyal following that will buy what you sell. Why? Because they trust you!
If you continue to be honest, authentic, you will maintain that trust and an unending stream of customers or clients who want, who need, what you offer. You won't have to tug, to pull, to get them to come to you. They will come because they want what you offer. You won't have to sell. They will buy. They will ask, "Can you help me?" "How much?" "Where do I sign?" Then you can deliver what you do best.
Rethink your approach. Rethink your audience. Rethink your end game. Engagement is two way and you need to deliver to make it happen. Why not decide to deliver first. Then see what comes. Deliver enough, often enough, and to the right people and it will happen. That's what engagement is all about. That's inbound marketing.