Inbound marketing vs. content marketing – which is king?

If you’re a business owner and you’re looking to improve your marketing campaign, you may be torn between taking the inbound marketing or the content marketing route. The purpose of inbound marketing is to draw the customer in with interesting content while focusing on converting visitors to your site into contented customers and eventually into loyal brand supporters.

Content marketing is the creation of relevant, valuable content across all media platforms, including social media. Content marketing involves communicating with your customers and future customers without selling to them; you’re actually giving consumers information that is useful to them with the idea being that customers then reward you with their business.

Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing involves:

• Identifying your audience. You need to understand your buyer before you even begin.
• Setting goals. Establish where you want to get to and your path to success will be infinitely clearer.
• Optimizing your landing page for SEO.
• Creating a call to action – for example, get visitors to fill in a membership form, or join your mailing list.
• Planning a follow-up campaign. Once you have established dedicated followers, don’t forget about them. Have a plan for future campaigns.
• Writing blogs. This gives your buyers the opportunity to get to know what your company is about
• Establishing a social media campaign.
• Picking the right keywords so people continue to find you.
• Making use of paid search and other channels. They need to be constantly monitored, however, to ensure they remain effective and useful.
• Determining where your traffic is coming from.

Content marketing

Content marketing addresses actual issues which are relevant to your customers; it’s not a case of spewing out meaningless copy just for the sake of it.

So, which marketing strategy is king? It’s simple, they are mutually beneficial. Great content will directly drive inbound traffic to you and once customers visit your site they will immediately be intrigued by your great content.

Need more clarity on your inbound and content marketing campaigns? WSI eBiz Solutions has a free inbound marketing checklist to help you out. Download the free checklist today.