Inbound marketing solutions help businesses' websites rank higher on search engine result pages. Higher ranks help get more web traffic. The more traffic websites get, the more business leads they generate. The more business leads there are, the more e-commerce sales opportunities there are.
Basically, inbound marketing strategies lead directly to big profits. In fact, e-commerce generated about $1 trillion in 2011, and about $1.2 trillion in 2013, showing that it continues to grow and grow each year.
However, many people still don't understand how inbound marketing strategies work. Though they'd like to use inbound marketing strategies to get a cut of e-commerce profits, they're simply confounded by the intricacies.
It's best to look at it like this: the art of inbound marketing is a lot like our natural world in that it's compromised by several different elements to make one, cohesive whole. Here are the four inbound marketing tools -- the four elements -- that work together to make an inbound marketing strategy.
SEO Is Like the Air.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is like the air in that it's one of the most vital parts of all inbound marketing strategies, but goes unseen. SEO is optimizing a website so that search engines can read it better, and give it a better rank. You can't see SEO, but you can feel it's presence.
Email Is Like the Earth.
Email is like the earth in that it helps your business grow. In fact, businesses can expect an ROI of $44.25 for every dollar spent on email, according to inbound marketing experts at Experian. Email marketing gets the word out about your business, bringing in new customers who will then share their positive experience with others, allowing you to cultivate a thriving base of customers.
Social Media Is Like Fire
Social media is like fire in that your company's posts can get shared and re-shared and then shared some more, endlessly generating brand awareness and spreading the word about your business like a wildfire.
Content Is Like Water.
Content is like water in that it courses through all of these inbound marketing strategies, binding them together. Without content, nothing can be posted on social media, no emails can be sent out, and nothing can be optimized. Like water, content is what sustains the life of inbound marketing strategies.
Hopefully now you have a better understanding of how inbound marketing strategies work. They're composed of different elements that work cohesively together to make a whole. None could be as effective without the others.
If you have any questions about inbound marketing strategies, feel free to ask in the comments.
