Ask Silver Bullet: August 2014

The term ‘inbound marketing’ is simply jargon for a concept which is essentially common sense. It refers to the practice of creating interesting and informative content to be presented on platforms such as your company website, so that your customers and clients are encouraged to visit and refer to your marketing materials on a repeated basis.

The idea is, instead of relying on customers finding you only when they need your product or service, the original, interesting and useful information that you provide FoC will encourage them to visit your site, read your newsletter, or follow social media profiles even if they don’t immediately need the service or product you provide.

It’s an excellent branding exercise as providing free quality content, whether it’s advice specific to your profession, developments regarding your business in the local area or just a well written blog with a personal touch, will raise your profile as a trusted source of information to your existing and potential clientele. You will position your business as a reliable resource with a strong brand which people are likely to remember when the time comes when they do need your product or service.

The tricky part of inbound marketing is maintaining quality over time. It can be difficult to think of original content month after month, so it’s a good idea to plan ahead.

Check your calendar and see if there are any events, large or small that you can relate back to your business in some way. Many companies use this tactic - just look at the dedicated marketing campaigns inspired by the World Cup this year.

Seasonal events such as Christmas also provide a good platform on which to build content and by using events that people are likely to be looking up online anyway, you improve your chances of showing up in search engine results, which is good news for your website and therefore good for your business, too.

Of course you can’t always plan ahead, every now and again something will happen that’s worthy of a response and the ability to react quickly in these situations is important. Reactive, or agile marketing is any marketing activity brought about in response to current affairs and thankfully, if your company has an online presence, whether it’s a website, a blog or social media profiles, it’s very easy and cost effective to do.

Digital media gurus and online experts are constantly telling us that online platforms enable us to reach our audiences in ‘real time’ – and while the term ‘real time marketing’ is verging perilously on the edge of the jargon we strive to avoid – the theory behind it is very reasonable.

Digital media, in particular social, provides a platform where interested parties can be kept up-to-date with what’s happening with your business or organisation as it’s happening (in real time), furthermore, they can find this information themselves in their own environment via their format of choice.

Here’s a few tips on how you can get started with your inbound marketing technique

- Follow trends specific to your sector

- Keep up-to-date with current affairs

- Keep a diary of major annual events and make sure you take notice of what happens at them

- Only piggy-back on events when they’re relevant – a tenuous link looks desperate, people are more likely to share clever, insightful or amusing posts

- If in doubt, leave it out. If you’re not sure if people will get the joke, it’s not worth risking offense - just leave it alone

Do you want to know more or do you have another marketing question we can help with? Is PR proving to be a nightmare? Or design doing your head in? Talk to us. Email your questions anonymously to us today hello@silverbulletmarketing.co.uk or Tweet us (not so anonymously) @SilverBulletPR and use the hash tag #AskSB