By Ed Pierce, Fleet Industry Marketer
In August, we quoted blogger Conor Bond’s description of inbound marketing’s value as allowing a company to “build trust with high-quality leads who demonstrate an active interest in your product or service, particularly important if your business has a relatively long sales cycle.”
A strategic, multi-faceted communications program, employing multiple tactics and communications channels, can help companies consistently keep the sales funnel primed and sales reps busy with new opportunities.
We already discussed three tactics — blogging, infographics, and white papers, so here are some other possibilities to include in a comprehensive program:
4: eBook
An eBook may be seen as an extended white paper with the same benefits, namely, an opportunity to develop your brand as an authoritative resource of actionable, insightful information, notes Bond.
5: Case History
Possibly even more effective than a white paper, a case history (or, case study) relates a success story of a company that purchased the service or product and achieved quantifiable results. A case history, especially closely related to solving the reader’s pain points, overcomes skepticism and reinforces a planned purchase.
6: Webinar (or, better yet, Seminar)
A webinar is simply an internet seminar—lecture-style content presented to an exclusive web audience. Designed to feature a member (or a few members) of your content team, along with industry “influential” who can support the user need underpinnings of the sales proposition can be both engaging and effective. Of course, a traditional seminar is preferable to a webinar because of the opportunity for a face-to-face meeting assuming it is cost-effective to do so.
7: Podcast
Much like the webinar, the podcast format allows you to attach some personality to your brand. That way, when your prospects are making their final decisions, they’ll remember you as both a valuable and relatable resource, notes Bond.
8: Video
As millennials especially know, web-based video content is huge – both engaging, and effective. Bond simply states: “It brings your brand to life.” However, while white papers and other tactics work best as long-form storytelling, video must be bite-sized – a minute or two.
9:SEO – Search engine optimization
Conor Bond saves the most important (and most confusing) tactic to last because search engine optimization makes the other tactics more effective. Specifically, SEO is an umbrella term in and of itself, referring to the suite of practices you need to make your content more visible in the search engine results pages.
Notes Bond, “It doesn’t matter how sleek your eBook looks or how crisp your podcast sounds unless your prospects can actually find you in the organic search results. That means getting your content on page one—ideally in the middle or at the top.”
Search engine optimization work entails on-page programming directly on your website to make your content more visible on a search engine like Google Chrome. Off-page SEO encompasses all the work that must be done to acquire links to your content from reputable websites. Each link indicates to search engines that your content is good and, therefore, worthy of moving up the organic ranks.
If you have other suggested inbound marketing tactics or successes you’d like to share related to fleet, feel free to drop me a note at [email protected].
