If you have a business in today’s tumultuous economic climate, then you’ve undoubtedly felt the pinch of the recession. More and more businesses are sinking as fewer and fewer people are making purchases. Many companies have simply given up and cut their losses before they’ve even had to, assuming that they will never be able to bounce back.

Now is more important than ever to get more leads and to get more traffic to your business. While many “brick and mortar” companies – businesses that use an actual building or store to conduct operations – aren’t huge fans of inbound marketing, the vast majority of them have a website. What’s wrong with this? Nothing. Except the website is sitting there doing nothing.

Having a website that’s on the internet is great, but if it’s not bringing in any traffic, then it’s not bringing in any sales either.

What inbound marketing does for any company out there is first take a look at your current inbound marketing efforts. Firms like ours will gauge just how strong your online presence is – that is, if you have one. From there we’ll be able to determine what steps have to be taken in order to get your company the attention that it needs. The first thing that we look at, and the number one thing that inexperienced companies don’t consider, is search engine optimization.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is imperative if you want to get anywhere online. The difference between a page that has been optimized and one that hasn’t is simple; page 1 of Google search results, and page 43,578 of Google search results.

Big difference, huh? And SEO isn’t just all about reaching out to people globally. In fact, for most brick and mortar companies, SEO is particularly important for them for local SEO purposes. Local SEO is huge as more and more people turn to the internet to find out about local businesses and compare products, services, and prices.

Blogs

Blogs are great tools that also support SEO. The more fresh content that you turn out, the higher you’ll rank in search engines. Search engines love websites that have quality, new, relevant content on a regular basis, and after a short amount of time blogging, you’ll definitely reap the benefits.

Blogs also give you the opportunity to give your website a human voice. You can write the blogs, have other employees or professionals within the same niche write blogs, or you can post some different media from time to time, like a piano playing cat. But writing blogs isn’t just about writing; there’s a lot more that goes into writing a blog so that it will help you get ahead in the search results. This is where an inbound marketing firm can help.

Video Marketing

If you’ve got a website and you’ve got products or services to sell, then you need to have a website to accompany that product or service. Videos are arguably the number one thing that will turn your leads into a customer. When you think about it, this makes sense. People like to know what they’re spending their money on, and a stale 2-D picture on a website isn’t really saying much about your awesome product. A video, however, can show them exactly what the product looks like, how it works, and how it can be used.

Landing Pages

Know what’s more effective than your direct mail marketing campaign? A landing page. Inbound marketing firms know what it takes to build a successful landing page that will have you building not only leads, but customers as well.

Key Takeaways

A lot of brick and mortar businesses have been around for a long while, and the owners are used to doing it all. When we spoke to some business owners, one reason why they weren’t really too keen on hiring on an inbound marketing firm is because they didn’t want to “lose control” of their business.

But that isn’t what inbound marketing firms are about. A top notch firm will work with the business and take the businesses ideas and turn them into something that will work to that company’s advantage online.

Firms also sit down with the business owner and talk about an online strategy, expected outcomes, and business owners and employees are taught how to use the tools necessary to run an inbound marketing campaign.

Need Help?

If inbound marketing is something you are interested in but are having trouble getting started, contact us today to schedule your free marketing analysis.