This is a guest blog article about Inbound Marketing from HubSpot Customer, Raki Wright, of Burris Computer Forms. Check out their DIY Printing Tips Blog.
Inbound marketing revolves around watching the masses, listening to your customers, and knowing when to target what aspect of your market base. Inbound marketers are always looking for ways to increase organic traffic to take advantage of seasonal product sales and seasonal changes in product demand.
Predict
By analyzing our historic data, we at Burris Computer Forms® are able to predict and prepare for spikes and drops in traffic. We know that our traffic peaks in the fourth quarter with retailers looking for shipping supplies to support their holiday sales and businesses looking for supplies for their seasonal marketing. There is also an influx in traffic at the end of the year and beginning of the year for tax forms (W-2’s, 1099’s, etc.). In the spring and summer, we’ve noticed an increase in traffic for door hangers.
In order to predict these spikes and drops we use the HubSpot Sources tab. Periodically we check to see what kind of traffic we’re bringing in with organic search as well as which of our Pay Per Clicks (PPCs) are pulling in the most qualified traffic (traffic that generates leads). In the weeks leading up to a particular time that we know we’ll be getting a traffic spike for a specific product, we’ll start using targeted key words in our blog posts to attract traffic.
Prepare
When we begin to prepare these keyword-specific blog posts and PPC campaigns, we check our keyword bank to see how many keywords we have on the particular product and season. Then we analyze them to see which keywords have been bringing in the most qualified traffic and try to base our marketing strategies on them.
Near the end of the summer, we begin contacting our Peel Out! Shipping Label Sheet™ customers to determine how they stand on their inventory of peel off laser sheets to see if they need to reorder more before the holiday season really kicks off. We’ll also begin blogging about shipping policies, holiday shipping, and order fulfillment to try to draw in more organic traffic.
Promote
Around each holiday we advertise our greeting card line with blog posts giving suggestions and ideas for cards. Furthermore, we advertise our free templates and explain how they can be used to print your own custom greeting, birthday, wedding, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, and other occasion cards.
We also promote our tax forms with coupons for those who order early. This usually brings in a fair amount of traffic from those looking to get a good head start on their taxes or large companies who require more time to prepare.
For successful inbound marketing, you just can’t ignore traffic trends. While you can make up for some lack of knowledge by using PPCs, there is an abundance of potential customers searching every day. These customers would love to purchase your products and services, so you don’t have to pay to get their attention. By using Google Insights, historical trends, and the HubSpot Sources tab, we are able to keep tabs on what our market group is searching for and from there figure out how to get them to our site.
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