You’ve heard the word ‘Content marketing’ many times for sure. But are you really doing it? And if you are, are you doing it well? According to Clinton Obura, formerly of Google and now Director of Business Development and Growth at Elephant Healthcare, Content marketing is key to generating inbound interest as content will drive traffic to your site, leading to inbound leads which are cheaper than outbound ones.

He shares seven inbound strategy tactics that you need to know for a great 2021.

1. Keyword Research
   This is where you identify the Google search key words that are related to your products and analyze the volume. By analyzing the volume you might find that zero people have searched for your company name. The reason most of the time is because people are not aware that you exist. So as a business you should work on creating more awareness and improve your chances of what is called Organic search. Also, find out what industry related keywords people use to find businesses like yours, and make sure these keywords appear on your website. Here’s a great place to start.
2. Content research
   In content research it is very important to classify content depending on the various personas. The information targeting various personas is different.  What a CEO wants is different form the goals of an IT specialist even if they exist in the same organization. A CEO would want information on maybe how digital marketing can grow their numbers in terms of marketing while the IT specialist given the same type of information would need more details on the technical part. Once you know the kind of content your Personas seek, it’s time to create your content.
3. Content Creation
   Here, you put those ideas from the content research into motion. You could have a writer write articles on them or you could do them yourself. Do you have a company blog? A twitter handle? A facebook or instagram account? Use them to disseminate content that your research tells you your prospects seek.
4. Design
   This mostly has to do with the aesthetics of your content. You could add relevant images, infographics, videos and other multimedia to your content. It’s more visually engaging than plain text.
5. Promoting
   This is the spreading of your content to bring more awareness and drive traffic to your websites.  A thing to note however is that people do not respond very well to ads, they prefer education. They prefer knowledge and having information. They do not want feel like products are being forced down their throats. They prefer a learning experience. This is why most B2B companies have invested heavily on educative/informative content. There are many creative ways of spreading your content, for instance through syndication platforms like Linkedin or Reddit, or via your email database.
6. Build Links
   Reach out to other publishers and ask them to share the links to your content. This will drive more traffic to your content and will improve your search engine ranking.
7. Conversation Rate Optimization
   Track and measure the conversation rate of your content. Keep doing what works and drop what doesn’t.  From there the content creation cycle begins again. Growth requires more than just picking a sales strategy and building a demand generation process. You must optimize. Be clear on your goals. Know that these are the numbers that you want to achieve and at this time. Track engagements with customers and how they engage with the content you put out.

Clinton Obura was a facilitator at Un.thinkable masterclass (our quarterly 10X Growth Leaders Workshop) in July 2020. Click here to apply for membership in Un.thinkable.