Getting traffic to your presence online is only a part of the formula.  Once the visitors come, we hope they will do something.  This doesn’t necessarily mean making a purchase.  Depending on the product a business offers it may not be practical to expect a conversion directly to a sale and this is something that should receive a lot of thought as you develop an online presence.

Instead, focus should be on converting to some type of action.  In the early days of development, your online efforts should be primarily directed at building an audience.  More than that is often going to be an unrealistic expectation and will lead to your giving up too soon. Unlike the older models of traditional advertising, your presence online is more about building trust and relationships – your interest is in drawing and engaging visitors to you on a continuous basis.  Blasting out nothing but commercial messages all the time won’t achieve this goal.

In the first step of inbound marketing it is all about building remarkable content across many channels online (and also offline to some degree if that is where your customers are).  Driving traffic to all of this content is crucial since having someone see it makes it much easier to convert them in this step to some action.

On your blog AND website there should be an opportunity for visitors to sign up for your email list.  If you believe a large segment of your preferred demographic may still prefer standard mail, it might also be smart to include the option of having material mailed in the conventional manner if possible.  A double opt-in registration system is preferred to make certain you are complying with the guidelines protecting people from Spam.  A double opt-in list means visitors sign up for the email list by typing in their name and email address (and any other information you may have asked for in your form) which is the first opt-in, then the new registrant receives an email from your system asking them to confirm that they registered.  That is the second opt-in and protects registrants someone else signing them up for email lists and adds a layer of protection for you in making sure the communication is wanted by the recipient.

To build trust in asking for this registration, be certain you post your privacy standards for how you will treat this data.  A brief message assuring visitors that you do not sell this list, that it is kept private and what to expect from you can go a long way in whether people will register.  In my case, the auto reply upon registration carries a message that gives a brief summary of how often they can expect to receive an email from me and a brief overview of what kind of information I share. There are some schools of thought that suggest you should email frequently, finding this annoying myself, I think once or twice a month is plenty.  This is an area where you can experiment and gauge results, adjusting accordingly.

In managing email marketing it should be done carefully and a policy should be adapted early that you will use this tool to continue the effort of promoting your remarkable content that will be produced on a continuous basis.  The idea, remember, is to be an asset and resource for your audience.  Instead, most take the approach of the interrupt model here, sending out message after message with commercials.  Including offers is fine, just avoid having the messages be all about that more than once in a great while.  You want to be a helpful resource, providing help and guidance, making life easier.

Here is a list of tools and methods that will be used to encourage and manage the conversion process:

• Product Pages
• Landing Pages
• Offers
• Lead Qualifying
• Lead Management
• Pay Per Click Advertising
• Forms
• Email marketing

Soon I’ll be sharing in depth methods for using each of the above tools and concepts, for now we’ll focus on the basic steps in the strategy of Inbound Marketing. My next post will cover the final step of this strategy and from there we’ll explore each step in much greater detail aimed at helping you start the process yourself or make educated decisions in outsourcing it.