In fact when it comes to marketing online no one thing is the answer. Just like offline.
A TV campaign won’t turn your company’s fortunes around, nor will a full page ad in the paper, or 30 x 30sec on the local radio station. You might get a short term spike, but none of these in isolation is the long term solution to better marketing and sales.
The truth is that marketing needs to be genuine and holistic.
Social media can be PART of the answer, so can SEO and SEM. A new website (or a better one) can be PART of your overall marketing plan for better communication with your potential customers.
It’s not realistic to rely on one tactic to deliver the sales and inquiries you need, but it is realistic to implement a holistic strategy incorporating a series of tactics that are aligned for your desired outcome.
That’s exactly how professional inbound marketing works and why we love it so much.
A well-designed, regularly updated website complemented by targeted SEO, and maybe some SEM, can work wonders. Add social media to the mix and suddenly your audience can grow exponentially providing you with the opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue with a wider community (potential prospects). Complete the loop with thorough Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) and you can turn traffic into genuine inquiries and sales.
That’s a holistic online marketing plan. That’s inbound marketing. THAT might be the answer you’re looking for.
As inbound marketers, one of the big questions clients ask us is which social networks they should be part of? “Should I join Twitter?”, “Will Facebook help build my business?”, “Is LinkedIn something we should consider?”
Twitter best for click-throughs
Our answer is always that different social networks can work well for different businesses, and each of them can be effective depending upon how you wish to use them.
Today a new report has surfaced detailing the most effective ways for marketers to spread their message online. It covers the sharing trends and click-through rates on different social networking sites as well as email. It makes for interesting reading.
The popular social networking, micro-blogging site Twitter is getting a revamp with the founders announcing the biggest overhaul of the site since it launched, and it includes a real bonus for inbound marketing.
The new Twitter has a lot of subtle improvements but probably the single biggest major improvement is the integration of videos and images in the tweet stream. By partnering with many major players such as TwitPic, Etsy, Flickr, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, TwitVid, USTREAM, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube, Twitter is enabling instant display of multimedia.
This is great news for inbound marketers and content generators and it will force many marketers to start producing content or be left behind.
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