Inbound marketing vs. outbound marketing has been a topic of many recent discussions. Content marketing strategies are constantly changing, and to help keep you on track, we’ve compiled a little guide for your marketing!
How to Get Started
Outbound marketing has generally proved itself ineffective for companies. 60% of American companies now use a form of inbound marketing, which brings in about 54% more sales leads than outbound. 60% also use blogging as a marketing strategy and those companies now have 97% more inbound links.
All You Need to Know: Social Media Marketing
In today’s world, advertising through social media is arguably the most important part of your marketing plan. 62% of marketers now consider social media an integral part of a marketing plan, since the average American company now has 178 social media marketing assets. Since about 77% of users have said that a social media login feature on a company website is a valued asset, features are consistently being updated to fit consumer needs. Social media has a 100% higher closing rate than any outbound marketing technique, making it impossible to skimp on. Business social media sites are absolutely essential to success.
In 2013, over half of marketers asked were generating sales leads through Facebook marketing. There are also almost 70% of companies with a Facebook page now, and focus for many marketers has turned to making that content consistent and interesting for users. Almost half of those surveyed reported that they have stopped following a company page due to repetitive or boring content, which of course results in a hit to your sales. Since 80% of consumers prefer to connect with businesses via Facebook, don’t fall into that category!
Twitter is another incredibly important site to have a presence on. Worldwide, there are about 100 million active Twitter users according to MindJumpers, so it is a huge resource for companies. 34% of companies generate sales leads from Twitter and about 20% have actually closed sales using marketing techniques on the site. In addition, 77 out of the biggest 100 companies now maintain a corporate Twitter account, so it’s definitely on most companies’ radar.
The last thing you need to keep in mind for content marketing strategies is search engines. Rankings on Google are becoming increasingly more important for companies. Mediapost found that Google’s search engine is used by over 85% of internet users worldwide. In 2012 alone Google was used by around 400 million people, and if you’re still not convinced, consider the fact that 93% of internet users start with a search.
So what do you think of these new content marketing strategies? Will you be working with a social media firm or doing it yourself? Let us know in the comments!
