Four Reasons Why Your Toronto Inbound Marketing is Failing
Toronto inbound marketing is bigger than ever, but just because a company is “doing inbound” doesn’t mean that they’re doing inbound well. There’s a lot more to inbound marketing than throwing up a blog and hoping for the best.
Straight from the online and inbound marketing directory agency, Adkote, here are some examples of how an inbound campaign fails… and how it can be made better.
Four Ways That Inbound Marketing Fails
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Bad/Uninteresting Content
The very basis of inbound marketing is that you’re providing articles and other content that a person browsing the web wants to see. In the words of early content marketing pioneer Howard Gossage, “Nobody reads advertising. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.” If your content does not interest people, it’s not going to work for an inbound campaign.
63% of marketers admit that their top challenge is generating enough traffic and leads.¹
Content must be designed to engage the reader. It’s the reason that companies are now considering the queries of individuals using search engines to reach their site, and then developing content around those queries. For example, if you’re a local Toronto design firm and you’re continually reaching local audiences using the query “bedroom design tips”, you might consider focusing more on content that offers bedroom design ideas.
This can then be adapted throughout the year, as your firm uses bedroom design tips for the summer as one post topic and bedroom design tips for a cozy winter as another.
Make sure that you’re responding to the information available to you. Analytics provides us with clear information on the type of content a client likes. It can tell us how long each visitor stayed on each page. How popular each page is over a particular span of time. And the locations of visitors to a particular piece of site content.
Use the information available to craft content for your high value target audience.
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Misunderstanding the Target Market
Why is so much content uninteresting to readers? Because the companies producing content don’t understand their market, or (worse) disregard what that market wants. To make content which is interesting to a group of people, you must understand that group – their likes and dislikes, their hobbies, their lifestyle.
This requires you to study the content currently available within your marketplace. When you search for content related to your niche and city, what are the top search results? Generally, these are the topics that are most popular within the marketplace. One technique you could try is to search on social media for the current trends in your marketplace.
Is there a common problem that your customers experience? Are they discussing a new product or service? You might consider building your content around the most popular trends and driving your company’s social media campaigns around your new content. This can help you to both reach your target audience and drive growth in your social media following at the same time. The two channels can then offer lasting value as part of a clear digital marketing strategy.
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Not Having a Clear Target Market
So then, why is so much content not properly targeted? Since targets weren’t clearly defined in the first place. In a world where inbound content marketing is truly ubiquitous, a company cannot try to be “all things to all people” unless it’s a huge player like Coca-Cola. This is where so much content fails. Companies try to produce material that theoretically has the most possible appeal, and in the process, create content that -in reality- appeals to nobody. Instead, quality content is precisely targeted for a precise group of people, even if it means excluding other groups.
For example, Toronto orthodontist Docbraces was having little luck with their digital content. They consulted an inbound marketing firm to complete an audit of their content, which was then torn down and rebuilt over time. Over 8 months, the company increased their site leads by 101% and their site traffic by more than 50%.
What is it that your customers want most from your content? Do they want answers to a certain question that has prevented them from achieving their objectives? For example, if you’re a local Toronto printing company, your customers might be local business owners who want to learn more on the latest styles to promote their brand.
Start by appealing to these local business owners and use your design experience to showcase the latest trends in the marketplace. Give them an understanding on their own audience and show them the true value of your expertise. As part of this process, you can start appealing to these local audiences via social media and create an ongoing dialogue regarding their questions and concerns. Try to build a list of target markets for your products and services based on this dialogue and you’ll soon create a content collection that is both evergreen and precisely targeted.
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Misunderstanding What Makes Their Product Unique
Digging deeper, most companies that try a “shotgun” approach of trying to market their products to a huge audience generally do not understand what makes their product unique or appealing. They are the plumber saying “Hey, we unclog pipes!” without considering that dozens of other plumbers all say the same thing. By identifying what makes their offering special, they can identify the groups it appeals to, and thus create great content targeting those groups.
Living Assistance Services, a Toronto seniors home care company generated 611 new leads in just 12 months through the use of a refined inbound marketing strategy that connected their brand with qualified service users across the region
Discover more on why your local audiences choose your brand. Are they choosing you based on the location of your company? Maybe the reason they choose your service is that your company offers 24/7 emergency work in the area. This process is part of a complete inbound marketing strategy that involves learning more on what your competitors are doing and finding a flaw in their strategies that opens up the marketplace for your company and its products and services.
A complete strategy should include data on the keywords driving clients to your site. These queries are the leading reason the customer is choosing your company over others in the marketplace, and they can be built upon over time by learning more on the foundation to your brand’s connection with its current customers.
In Summary
Let’s review the tips from this latest inbound marketing post:
- People read what interests them, make sure your content is compelling and drives engagement.
- To create quality content, you must first learn the likes, dislikes, hobbies and questions your audience has.
- Address your audience on social media platforms, and learn about the products, services and trends being discussed by marketplace audiences.
- Taking a data driven approach that includes competitor research, site data research and market analysis can help your brand build a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy.
Need help defining your Toronto inbound marketing strategy? Start a conversation with the team at Adkote to get started today!
¹ https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/state-of-inbound-stats