A Quick Guide toInbound Marketing for

Busy Business Owners

What is Inbound Marketing?Inbound marketing is about attracting visitors to your business instead of interrupting them with your messages via direct mail, commercials or other traditional forms of advertising.

Inbound marketing earns the attention of your prospects using messaging that speaks directly to their needs. Then the organic nurturing process help convert them into customers!

Seems Like a lot of work… I Don’t Have Time For That!As a small business owner, you wear a lot of hats and in an ideal world you would be able to be active in all areas of inbound marketing.

You may not be able to do it all, but you can do something. The best thing for you to do, is break it down into manageable, effective phases.

• Content Creation• Optimization• Promotion• Review and Improve

Phase 1: Create Content That Adds Value

Start by brainstorming ideas of content that you can offer on your website to you buyer persona.

(Not sure what a buyer persona is? Check this out.)

This content needs to be geared towards your target client and should be centered around a need or solution to a problem they are having.

Phase 1: Content Offer Ideas• eBooks• Webinars• White papers• Case studies• Explainer Videos• Workbooks• Etc.The possibilities are endless but these are a few great jumping of points. Really, anything that your buyer persona sees as adding value to them should be your main focus!!

Phase 2: Optimize!

After you created a few pieces of awesome content, it’s time to optimize your website in 3 areas.

• On-Page SEO• Usability• Conversions & Lead Generation.

Phase 2: On-Page SEOEnsuring your site is optimized for search is key to being found online. On-page SEO is the foundation to creating search marketing that lasts.

We’ve created a complete checklist of on-page SEO tasks that you can download and follow to make sure your site is optimized for search.

THE ULTIMATE SEO CHECKLIST

Phase 2: UsabilityHaving a site that is optimized for your users is a must. Make sure you have clear navigation to help your users as they explore your website.

Also, don’t try to do everything on each page. Have a focused strategy for each page and focus the content around one subject.

Remember: Your website is not for you, it’s for your users!

Phase 2: Conversions & Lead Generation.

The last step in this phase is optimizing your website for conversions and lead generation. Remember that awesome content you created? If you want people to engage with it, this step is key!

• Add Calls-to-Action above the fold on your website• Create clean, focused landing pages• Make the next steps clear after a prospect engages.

Phase 3: Promotion Welcome to the toughest part… hope the last few phases weren’t to difficult. Traffic generation and promotion is often where many small businesses give up. But if you can push through this phase, you will reap huge benefits.

3 Areas of Promotion we are going to look at are…• Local SEO• Content Marketing• Social Media Marketing

Phase 3: Local SEODeveloping a strong local presence is often key for most small business owners. Claim your local directory listings on sites like Yelp, Google Business & Manta. Add you address, phone number, some pictures and website URL.

There are some great tools out their that are free and can help you out a ton. Check them out in this post we wrote:

3 Free Tools To Help You Develop An Awesome Local SEO Strategy

Phase 3: Content MarketingDo you have a blog? If not, it’s time to get one and start blogging. Don’t just take my word for it, check out these stats as proof.

Write about topics that your potential customers will see as valuable. Make sure that you optimize each post for the search engines. We recommend you post at least once a month but the more frequent you post the more potential you have for engagement.

Phase 3: Social Media MarketingIt’s time to get your message out and there is no faster way to accomplish this than using social media. Scheduling your posts will make your life a ton easier. We recommend Hootsuite. It’s free, and it’s awesome!

For each blog post, schedule a variety of posts on your social media accounts. Don’t over share. Find a good balance. You don’t want to annoy your prospects.

Phase 4: Review and ImproveOnce you are successfully implementing the previous phase, it’s time to start setting up the review process to go through everything you're doing to try and improve.

If you haven’t done so already, set up a Google Analytics account to track you visits and conversions.

I would recommend starting quarterly or every other month and as you have more time, move to monthly or bi-weekly reviews.

Phase 4: Review and ImproveHere are some general questions to answer while reviewing your metrics:

• How are visitors finding our website?• Are these visitors converting into leads?• Which call to actions are receiving high click through

rate and which ones are not?• How can we improve our call to actions, landing

pages and content offers to try and improve conversion rates?

Want to learn more?You just learned a few basic ways to begin implementing Inbound Marketing for your small business. If you want to learn more, check out our blog: blog.smamarketing.net – We are always adding new content to help business like yours grow.

We also have an inbound marketing knowledge center full of free resources for you to download and use to grow your business.

Visit out Inbound Marketing Resource Center

We know you’re busy, but schedule some time to add inbound marketing to your small business plan. Your message deserves to be heard!

Who We AreShelley Media Arts is a growth driven Inbound Marketing Agency in Central Florida. We work with Small & Mid-Size businesses by helping amplify their message using Inbound Marketing, SEO and Growth Driven Design.

To learn more visit: www.smamarketing.net