Starting a new website can be a challenge in today's world. With so many businesses vying for attention in the crowded online marketplace, it can be difficult for new websites to stand out and attract the visitors they need to succeed.
Unfortunately, inbound marketing offers some great opportunities for companies to improve their go-to-market strategy and gain more exposure in the process.
For inbound marketing to be effective, it is important to understand exactly what it entails and how it can be used in a business context.
Inbound marketing is a strategy in which companies use content marketing, blogging, social media and search engine optimization (SEO) to attract visitors from search engines.
Unlike traditional outbound marketing techniques such as direct mail or cold calling, which aim to drive leads directly into the sales funnel, inbound relies on drawing people to the site in an organic, referral-based manner.
This type of marketing is great for increasing your brand awareness, as its accuracy often leads to high-quality leads and higher conversion rates.
People come to your website through search engines, rather than being drawn to it through ads or other channels. It also helps build trust between you and the customer, as inbound marketing involves creating and delivering high-quality content that your target audience is actually looking for.
Before we look at how you can use inbound marketing to drive your new website launch, let's look at some of the benefits of this type of marketing.
Very targeted visitors:A slow but steady stream of inbound traffic is a low-risk way to grow your customer base organically.
Higher conversion rates: Since inbound marketing is typically more targeted than outbound marketing, you're likely to get higher quality leads that are much more likely to convert into sales.
Many inbound links to your site: Search engines like Google consider inbound links a signal of quality and authority. The more inbound links pointing to your site from other high-quality sources, the higher you will rank in search results for relevant keywords.
Many well-known brands have relied on inbound marketing as part of their strategy for success. While it can take some time to master, it should give your business the edge you need to stand out in a crowded market.
Now that we know what inbound marketing is and what makes it an effective strategy for building brand awareness and driving traffic, let's look at some ways you can use inbound marketing to help launch your new website.
A good pre-launch marketing plan is essential to the successful launch of a website. The weeks and months leading up to your website launch are a critical factor in the success or failure of your launch.
Setting up a pre-launch website or landing page in preparation for the launch is a great way to attract attention, draw visitors, and build an audience in the weeks leading up to the launch.
With a sign-up form on your pre-launch website, you can start building an email list of interested contacts. You can then email these contacts with updates on your site's progress and details about your product or service, and notify them when the site goes live.
Just because your website hasn't opened yet doesn't mean you can't start promoting it. You can start driving traffic to your website URL before your website is officially launched to increase its visibility in search engines.
There are several ways to do this - including paid advertising - but many of the organic methods described in this post have proven to be extremely effective. Not only should you promote your URL, but you should also try to get as many links as possible from other sites that point to that URL.
According to a recent HubSpot report, about 64 percent of marketers actively invest time in SEO - and for good reason! Incorporating SEO strategies into your marketing efforts will increase both your website's visibility and rankings.
To ensure that your site is optimized for search engine optimization, upload an XML sitemap to provide search engines with a list of the pages and posts on your site. This will allow Google to crawl your site more efficiently and speed up the indexing of your content.
You should also include relevant keywords in your navigation bar, title tags, post titles, header tags, alt image tags, etc. to get more organic traffic and build links to your website.
To maximize the success of your new website in terms of driving traffic and improving search engine optimization, spend some time upfront creating blog posts on relevant topics. This may include video content. If you do this before launch, you'll be in a great position to get inbound links from other blogs and websites, which in turn will help move your site up in the search engine rankings.
In addition to topical blog posts, you can also create other helpful content-based resources that align with your business goals. For example, think about e-books, how-to guides, checklists, FAQs, etc. Creating high-quality, value-driven content is not only beneficial for search engine optimization, but it also helps build trust with your audience and establishes you as an authority in your industry in the eyes of consumers.
To build an audience before your website launches, you can also use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to connect with potential customers before you launch. Not only can you share interesting industry information that may be relevant to users, but you can also post links to your website to encourage organic inbound links.
Sharing valuable content on these platforms before you launch your new website can generate a lot of interest in your website ahead of time.
You can consider Quora as another way to generate interest in your website before you launch it by sharing valuable content there and answering relevant questions to position yourself as an expert in the industry. Quora has an audience that is usually engaged with the topics being discussed, which means their interest in your content will be high.
Try posting to relevant groups and forums in addition to the usual public profiles. This way, you'll get valuable insights from users and experts in your industry - a great way to get feedback on whether or not your website launch is going in the right direction!
Another great tactic you can use to improve your search engine rankings is to work with influencers and the media to get them to cover your new website before the launch date. By working with bloggers and influencers, you can get inbound links to your website and achieve higher search engine rankings.
You could organize collaborations, write blog posts for their website that link to yours, or hire journalists to write in-depth articles about your product or service that you can use to get links from highly authoritative sources.
As you can see, inbound marketing is a powerful tool when it comes to launching your new website. Investing in inbound strategies for your launch can help generate traffic from day one and increase your website's reach over time.