Inbound Marketing Best Practices: Your Complete Guide for 2023

Inbound marketing, or “pull marketing,” has proven much more effective than traditional outbound marketing efforts, also known as “push marketing.” In 2023, marketers are investing more in their inbound methodology, which tracks with the evolving nature of search engines, technology and the customer-centric world in which we now live.

But what does that have to do with you?

How Inbound Marketing Can Help Your Brand Stand Out

The outbound marketing strategy involves increasing brand awareness by stopping a consumer in their tracks and getting them to notice your brand. It’s the first thing that comes to mind for many people when they think of traditional marketing, but the truth is, inbound marketing is more successful than outbound marketing for lead generation.

Successful inbound marketing is all about being there for a potential customer when they need you. You want your target audience to serendipitously find your brand while they are asking questions that you know the answers to or seeking a product or service that you offer.

The backbone of any inbound marketing campaign is intuitive content creation tailored to fit your target audience’s needs. Then, you have to strategically place quality content somewhere useful — like in a high-ranking spot in a search engine result or as a backlink on the landing page of another reputable website.

Devising Your Inbound Marketing Strategy

Inbound marketing is devised of many strategies, not least of which are things like search engine optimization (SEO), web content creation, landing pages, email marketing and social media marketing. We know these inbound strategies are effective, so it’s time to scrap the cold-calling and generate higher-quality leads with these inbound marketing best practices.

Your customers are out there searching — and waiting.

Email Marketing: Level-up Through Automation and Customization

Every dollar spent on email marketing returns an average of $42 — that’s ROI 101. At its core, inbound marketing rests upon email, so automating as much of this revenue-generating channel as possible is the best way to create a workflow that, well, works.

In 2021, more marketers will be utilizing automation platforms, which enable more strategic decision-making, targeted budgets and measurable rates. Top offerings include MailChimp, Marketo and Constant Contact, to name a few. Companies who use marketing automation agree it’s a game-changer. This is likely why worldwide spending on marketing automation platforms is estimated to grow 14% every year.

To get enough eyes on your content, and to serve valuable content that converts, you’ll need to create custom newsletters; think of these as your brand magazine. The content you deliver via email should be hyper-focused on relevant questions and concerns your subscribers have, and the more you can personalize each email, the likelier you are to encourage responses and generate leads.

SEO: Change or Be Changed

As one of the most dominant inbound marketing channels, search engine optimization (SEO) will only become more important over time. SEO-friendly content helps you rank organically in search, helps prospects discover you for the first time and helps deliver on searcher intent.

Search algorithms are changing at a breakneck pace, and SEO today will not be SEO tomorrow.

Take Google, for instance. This dominant search engine comes out with a new algorithm update roughly every 2-6 months or so. Some of these updates have significant effects on how content ranks, and the industries that are impacted vary from update to update. In May 2020, for example, Google implemented what Search Engine Journal called the most widespread update since 2003, resulting in a shifting of rankings for local search businesses and health and wellness websites.

Focus your efforts on both technical SEO and content updates. This means writing strong, authoritative and relevant content and keeping it fresh by updating on a semi-regular basis. What does this look like? If you’re keeping up on your keyword research, you may notice a shift in searcher behavior — so update your content accordingly, using the new, more relevant keywords to your advantage. This doesn’t mean you have to rewrite an entire blog post, either — just make minor tweaks so that the new keywords will settle into the piece cohesively (don’t stuff them). Oh, stats and facts, too. Update stats and facts.

Every day your site performance lags, UX disappoints or content misses the mark, your SEO will suffer, making it much harder to produce the inbound traffic you need to compete in 2023.

Retargeting: Convert Through Recaptures

Studies have shown that online shoppers have an abandonment rate of 68%. In other words, they were not actually ready to make a purchase. Retargeting allows you to capture (and hopefully convert) this web traffic that came to your site but left empty handed.

With a small snippet of code (a cookie) on your site, you can track the history and mobility of your web traffic and then serve them ads afterward. In effect, your ad spend is going toward users who are already familiar with your brand, so the probability of conversion is much higher.

When your inbound strategy comprises a strong retargeting campaign, your dollars are trackable down to the cent, and you’re able to stay in the forefront of visitors’ minds at all times. This subtle yet effective nurturing encourages visitors to return to your site until they finally convert.

Social Media Marketing: Know Your Channels

As social media continues to displace traditional advertising, more brands are focusing their attention on user-generated content and micro influencers to win over perpetually skeptical customers. But rather than carpet-bombing the already-saturated social media universe, B2B and B2C companies are electing to invest their money only in proven channels.

For B2B, that’s likely to mean a strategy that’s primarily built upon a strong LinkedIn and Twitter presence, whereas B2C marketers may continue their push on Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram. Conducting a competitive analysis of your competitors’ social media strategies can help inform where to focus your efforts as well. But if you’re having trouble, you may find value starting on Instagram, where more than 80% of firms recognize that influencer marketing campaigns bring in high quality customers.

And with every share, retweet and new follower comes a fresh prospect to cycle into your inbound marketing methodology.

Blogs: More Than Just Words

There are enough keyword tools on the market to provide a solid foundation on which to create targeted content. But a one-size-fits-all keyword strategy only gets you so far — you need piece-by-piece, personalized research for every individual asset, not simply stuffing the same target keywords into every blog post.

Blogs keep your organic strategy moving forward, increase your search presence for relevant keywords and provide fodder for your email campaigns and social postings, so you better put them to work for you in an effective way. To do so:

• Focus on topical relevance, not individual keyword rankings.
• Include multiple media formats, such as embedded videos, graphics, GIFs, tweets and more.
• Map content direction to specific personas.
• Re-optimize old content for today’s uses.
• A quality blog post lets your target audience know that you’re an expert in the field. It establishes trust and increases your brand awareness. The only way to keep your inbound ecosystem churning with new prospects is through fresh content.

Persona Development: Understand Your High-value Prospects

Your inbound marketing strategy is essentially dead in the water if you don’t have full insight into your target customers. Most marketers make the mistake of creating content and campaigns around the buyer persona instead of the site visitor persona. But the people who consume your content are not necessarily the people who buy from you.

Develop ultra-specific personas using the data you already have on hand. You can get started by asking yourself questions like:

• Who buys your product?
• Who influences purchasing decisions?
• What are the interests of your core readers/subscribers?
• What assets actually move the needle in your customer journey?

Separate your avid readers from your commercial influencers and final decision-makers, as each of these personas is unique and requires personalized content.

This is how you drive macro conversions.

Brand Activation: Interactivity as a Service

How do you get people to interact with your brand, to understand it, to trust it? That’s the goal of brand activation, and it should be a core component of your inbound marketing efforts.

Consumers today expect a lot from their brands. In fact, 81% of shoppers can be categorized into two groups: Purpose-driven shoppers (44%) and value-driven shoppers (37%). Increasingly, consumers seek out brands with purpose and meaning that align with their beliefs about sustainability, for example.

This means you need interactive content that connects with consumers and solicits feelings of innovation, creativity and problem-solving.

To accomplish this, host live webinars, conduct real-time chats and contests over social media, run experiential and physical marketing events, create games and quizzes and so on — if it involves user participation, do it. The more of these efforts you invest in, the more prospect data you capture and the more shareable your content becomes.

Stale, text-heavy, stock-image branding hurts your commercial perception.

Video: Content That Converts

Humans are visual creatures whose attention spans are rapidly shrinking. Cut the fluff and hit site visitors and email subscribers with content they’re hardwired to digest and enjoy: video (and especially short form video).

Video marketing has grown into its own subset of content marketing and is proven to generate higher conversions, better-quality leads and more-engaged brand advocates.

You need product videos on landing pages, short explainers on mobile and shareable animations/interactive features on social media. Moving forward, you’ll more specifically need augmented and virtual reality videos, which are an untapped marketing initiative for most companies.

Afterall, James McQuivey of Forrester does say that 1 minute of video is worth about 1.8 million words.

Repurposing video content is a great strategy, too, and not something that’s exclusive to text-based collateral. Have you made an intriguing YouTube video that runs a little on the long side? Chop it up into various clips and share it across TikTik and Instagram.

Ads: Pay to Play

Ads enable you to own branded terms, better serve customer intent throughout the search journey and retarget prospects across any channel. And where do you get some of the best data to craft your ads? Your inbound strategy: those who’ve landed on your site organically.

It’s predicted that worldwide ad spending will increase, reaching $836.82 billion by 2026.

Paid ads complement your organic efforts, giving your brand the boost it needs to get the right message in front of the right audience.

With Google Ads, you can bid for top visibility for the highest-value commercial-intent keywords that are most likely to generate leads. Social media provides the podium for amplifying the visibility of your great content, ensuring maximum readership and sharing.

Paid efforts should never replace an organic strategy, but rather should be used in tandem to ensure maximum reach.

Analytics: Tools of the Trade

The success of your strategy is only measurable if you have the right analytics tracking in place. And to keep fueling additional efforts, you need data as your starting point. Review past performance of content, analyze the data and tweak your strategy accordingly. Data and content go hand in hand, so if something works, chase it. If it doesn’t, well, at least you weren’t afraid to be creative.

Setting up custom reports, goal tracking, campaigns and other segmentation in Google Analytics allows you to report back to executives and creative teams on the performance and future trajectory of your inbound marketing. Without this level of granularity, you’re blind — plain and simple.

Additionally, inbound is all about refining and pivoting — if something didn’t work (because the data tells you), scrap it and move on. If you’ve uncovered a tactic that is more effective in converting, shift resources accordingly. There’s no such thing as a “set it and forget it” mentality — prospects today demand only the best, and that means you’ll have to keep adapting.

Now That You Know the Inbound Marketing Best Practices, What’s Next?

With these inbound marketing tips, you should be primed for greater inbound success in 2023 and beyond. Perhaps the biggest takeaway, however, is that great results in Q1 should not necessarily dictate the remainder of the year’s strategy.

Keep on innovating, experimenting and refining month to month, asset by asset.

Inbound marketing works only if there is a continuous stream of fresh and engaging content to feed your highest-value customers, so the overarching objective here is to be tuned in to your analytics at all times while still keeping your ear close to upcoming trends and unknown variables that may arise.

Good luck!

Editor’s Note: Updated March 2023.