7 Quick and Easy Ways To Improve Your Marketing

If you're in charge of inbound marketing for your business, you know the definition of "overwhelming". In order to continually engage potential leads, you run yourself ragged updating landing pages, sending out email marketing messages, writing eBooks, "SEO'ing" your existing content, and more. With all these responsibilities on your plate, it's imperative that you are efficient at your job. Here are 7 quick and easy ways you can improve your marketing strategy in little to no time.

Link To Internal Content/Offers - When you're busy creating new content, don't forget that internal linking is not only a huge SEO strategy, but it's also a way to take advantage of an interested lead. If your lead is reading an article that they find intriguing, and you have other content that's relevant or you have an offer that's relevant, link to it! For example, if you have a blog post about "Facebook SEO Strategies" and you happened to have written an eBook about that same topic, highlight the words "Facebook SEO" in your blog post and link to your eBook. Just be sure not to mislead your reader by linking to something that's not relevant at all. It establishes a "spammy" appearance and can create a feeling of distrust.

Get Interactive - Being social is just a part of business, and any good inbound marketer will have several social platforms to keep up with, whether it's Facebook, a blog, Twitter, a forum, etc. Take a minute out of your day to respond to comments left on these platforms. The whole point of having a social platform is to promote a feeling of interactivity between the customers/fans and the business.

Call-To-Action - It's amazing how often a call-to-action is left off of content. You should literally have on one each and every piece of content you put out. Go through your existing content and make sure you have some sort call-to-action. If you don't, add one. It can be something as simple as "opt-in to our newsletter to receive special discounts" or "click here to get your free eBook".

Reword Your Content - This is especially true for blogs and or page titles. Any good SEO firm will tell you that your meta titles are not only extremely important for indexing, but they are also important for traffic. You can't get leads without traffic, and you can't get traffic if your blog posts or page titles are boring. Take a minute to go through a couple pages/blog posts to make sure the titles are enticing.

Share - You've got all this great information to give people, so share it! If you're a marketer and you're not sharing your content via social networks and other outlets (i.e. press releases), well... it's time for a new job.

Button Up - Make sure your call-to-action buttons are not boring. Do they need a little more life? Studies have shown less people click on buttons that are titled "Submit" than any other button. If you have "Submit" buttons, change them to something more relevant or more exciting. Make sure it's something that seems noncommittal; otherwise people will be less likely to click on it. For example, "Submit" seems official, whereas "Get Your Discounts Now" does not.

Get Bold- Go through any landing pages or sales pages (including your website's home page) to see if it passes the blink test. What's the blink test? A lead should be able to look at your website and within the amount of time it takes them to blink; they should be able to get the gist of what your site offers and whether it's relevant to them. Go through and bold or italicize words/phrases that can sum up your business' offer and value quickly.

Does Your Business Stand Out From The Crowd?

If your business is struggling, then you may find that it's very easy to blame the wider economic environment. You may feel that things could improve for you, if only the general economy was performing a little better. This feeling that it's better to blame the wider situation is tempting, but can also be wrong.

The reality is that some businesses are extremely successful, despite a recession or some form of economic downturn. You need to think about whether your own business manages to produce success in such a situation. If not, is there something that you are doing wrong?

It's not always nice, or easy, to admit that you are making mistakes. It is true, however, that none of us are perfect. If you're able to identify errors and correct them, then you'll be in a great position. The worst thing to do is to ignore problems, in the hope that they will go away.

So what's going wrong for you right now? You may feel like you are failing to compete successfully. If this situation sounds familiar, then you'll need to look more closely at your existing marketing efforts. Why are other businesses more successful in this area? What can you learn from them?

I have, as you may have noted, immediately assumed that you actually have some sort of marketing strategy in place. If this is an area of your business that has been completely neglected, then I would suggest that you need to be making changes pretty quickly. It's too easy to fall into the trap of assuming that marketing will handle itself, or that it doesn't require much effort.

The reality is that the best businesses are constantly thinking about the marketing approach that they are taking. They are always looking to improve things and to stand out from the crowd. They want to make sure that they are shouting loudly about the great products and services that they're able to offer.

You may feel that you don't need to take the same approach, since your business is ticking along. What you need to think about is whether you will continue to have success over the coming months and years. Do you have a suitable strategy in place to be attracting new clients on a regular basis?

There are plenty of approaches that you can take, but one of the most important ideas is that you should be making time to carry out marketing. This means setting aside a few hours each week and ensuring that you are dedicating time to such tasks. If you're not already doing this, as an absolute minimum, then you're in danger of falling behind your rivals.

Make sure that you are in a position to compete successfully. Ensure that your marketing efforts are putting you ahead of the competition.