Every experienced marketer and business leader knows that modern marketing is all about engaging with your audience and inspiring your target demographic to reach out instead of forcing your brand or your products on them. This is called inbound marketing, and there are many ways it helps businesses across the globe reach their goals. From leveraging user-generated content to market a business or a non-profit on a tight budget to creating quality-driven articles and videos that grab the viewer’s attention and inspire action, inbound marketing should be your priority.
That said, it’s important to keep in mind that paid advertising also has a vital role to play in your inbound marketing strategy. Today, we’ll be exploring the role of online advertising in boosting the quality, reach, and effectiveness of inbound marketing tactics, and how combining these methods can help your brand stand out, build its reputation, and of course, deliver tangible results.
Complement Your SEO Efforts
You probably know by now that SEO is a long-term commitment, and long-term digital marketing strategy. You can’t expect SEO to deliver fast results, because that’s not its purpose – which is to gradually improve your standing in all the relevant SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), take you to the first spot on Google, and improve brand visibility and awareness. That’s great, you should definitely invest in SEO, but what are you going to do to gain immediate traction and exposure? You’re going to complement SEO with paid ads, of course.
There’s no better way to get your brand in front of your audience quickly while you’re waiting for your SEO efforts to generate the desired results than to invest in SEM and SMM. What’s more, you can leverage the surge in traffic to improve your SEO efforts at the same time, so it’s kind of a win-win.
Promote Your Amazing Content
There are many effective and affordable ways to promote your content. One would be to simply publish content on your social media accounts on a regular basis (preferably every day and on a strict schedule) to build a loyal following that knows what to expect and when to expect it. Another great way is to promote content via email, but these and other “free” methods aren’t exactly perfect for getting new visitors to your site. Most of the time, they work on existing customers.
This is where paid advertising can be of tremendous help, as you can use ads to position your content above the rest in the relevant search results and guide people to your site. An important reason why this type of content promotion is so effective is that you are not trying to sell anything directly, so the customer doesn’t feel threatened. In a sea of ads that focus solely on making a sale, your ads can focus on building quality leads and a loyal following that has a high chance of converting and spreading the word of your brand.
Making Decisions Based On Relevant Metrics
The beautiful thing about paid advertising is that it’s measurable, which cannot be said for many inbound marketing tactics out there. Using your Google AdWords dashboard, you can track, monitor, and optimize various metrics to create truly effective marketing campaigns that will resonate with the hearts and minds of your audience, and inspire them to take action.
It’s important to note that paid advertising can provide you with timely and relevant data that you can use to improve all aspects of your marketing campaigns, especially if you know how to manage AdWords and its various features to get the most out of the popular tool. These insights will help you optimize your content and build your competitive advantage, and most importantly, reach the right audience with targeted campaigns.
Create Highly-Targeted Campaigns
One of the most compelling things about paid ads is that the numerous tools and metrics within your control allow you to reach your ideal customer instead of casting a wide net and hoping for the best. In turn, this allows you to create content that not only sparks interest but also engages with the right customer to produce the best possible outcome.
Some of the variables you can control to create targeted ads include:
- Age.
- Gender.
- Industry and niche.
- Occupation.
- Preferred device type.
- Location.
- Preferred content type such as videos, infographics, or other.
- Online behavior and habits.
- Income.
- General and nuanced interests.
- And many more.
Leverage The Global Reach Of Paid Ads
PPC makes it easy to reach anyone on the web, simple as that. In fact, Google Ads currently reaches 90% of internet users, which makes it one of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal if brand awareness and reach are your goals. This is a great way to reach people where they hang out most on the web, which will invariably save you time and money, all the while ensuring that your content, products, and brand get seen and experienced by the right person.
Wrapping up
Inbound marketing is the name of the digital marketing game, but that doesn’t mean that certain tactics that don’t fall directly into this category can’t boost its effectiveness and improve your brand’s performance in the competitive online market. Be sure to use paid advertising in your inbound strategy, and watch as your relevant metrics start to improve across the board.
