8 Tips to Use Inbound Marketing for Online Brand Positioning

1. Customers Define Your Brand Positioning

In this new era of Digitalism, consumers dictate your brand definition. Customers have unprecedented access to information, research & reviews. No longer can a company merely push, pull, trick, manipulate or fully control their brand image. You must create positive engagement with Prospects. Why?

Online brand positioning is like a sand castle; it takes a long time to build it beautifully and only one big wave to destroy it.

This new truth includes you and your company unless, of course, you have no online presence. In that case, disregard my advice as you already have one foot in the petrified footprint of the dinosaur, following it into extinction.

2. Build a Conversion Website

Online Brand Positioning is a collectively defined package of consumer perceptions. If it was a Mercedes it would be the paint job, the interior leather & burled wood, and the exterior upgrade as a whole. But if your Benz is being powered by a 2-stroke scooter engine, it?s not the complete package.

For online brand positioning, you need more than a website.
You need a Conversion Machine.

Your website is the engine of Inbound Marketing. Build it to be a powerful conversion machine and your online business brand will thrive.

A conversion website is designed and built to attract Visitors. By creating conversations with consumers through relevant, timely content, you can cause conversions. The ultimate goal is to create loyal, repeat customers for life.

3. Create a Holistic Inbound System

So, you know your online business brand needs a conversion machine. Your website ?engine? needs to work with other online components to create a holistic Inbound system. This system does the following:

Attracts Visitors through relevant, timely & contextual web content.
Nurtures a Visitor to become a Lead by providing something of value in exchange for contact data.
Converts a Lead to a Customer by encouraging a purchase. This could be an online purchase. Or it could occur by efficiently & automatically handing over a lead from Marketing to Sales when buying signs are given.

4. Audit Your Website and Inbound Marketing

If you have an Inbound Marketing process, you should audit that process to ensure it?s a holistic Conversion Machine. If you don?t yet have an Inbound Marketing process, that?s ok.

Start simple. Get graded with a Website Grader. You can get a snapshot of your website for free.

For a more comprehensive approach, graduate to a formal Inbound Assessment. Hire a professional firm to perform an Inbound Assessment. Generally speaking, you may want to steer clear of ?free? here, unless you?re not serious yet, or if you?re just sampling.

A comprehensive Inbound Assessment provides a baseline from which future metrics can be compared.

5. Start with a Strategic Inbound Marketing Plan

Start with strategy. This is not a ?vision statement.?

Good strategy asks:

Why do you have a website?
How does your online presence add value to customers?
What is your unique position in the online space?
Who are your current and target customer personas?
What assets (people, processes, products) does your company need to build value and deliver on your differentiation?

6. Attract with a Content Strategy

Content is the fuel for your website engine. Most companies don?t understand content. Fewer understand its power and value. That?s good for you because early adopters of content Best Practices will win the war in building a positive online business brand.

Great content delivered to users on their terms works. An effective content strategy includes a content recommendation that:

Educates prospects who are in the research phase of the buying cycle.
Engages visitors to become leads.
Encourages Leads to purchase, creating a Customer.
Embraces past Customers in order to create loyal customers for life.

7. Convert Leads with CTAs

Cleverly place Calls-to-Action on your website. Design a CTA map based on intuitively providing the ?next step? on your website.

When implemented correctly, CTAs are not offensive. Rather, they naturally nurture customers to a conversion.

When you become a content resource for your prospects & customers, you create a positive habit. By having a formal, written CTA map for your conversion site, you?ll increase conversions.

8. Online Business Brand Alignment

Statement from the past: ?Sales and marketing don?t talk. They?ll never understand each other or get along.?

Statement from the future: ?Sales & marketing have shared goals. Marketing efficiently delivers qualified leads to the sales team. Sales follows up effectively with specific intelligence about the prospective customer?s needs.

Inbound Marketing helps improve your online brand positioning. But it probably won?t happen without engaging an experienced, knowledgeable, objective outside advisor. Hire a professional.?