"If You Have More Money Than Brains, You Should Focus On Outbound Marketing. If You Have More Brains Than Money, You Should Focus On Inbound Marketing.” - Guy Kawasaki

You’ve probably realized there is a lot of competition for lifestyle brands to weed through online. Some 700 Million active websites around the globe have their hand up, trying to flag down traffic. Every minute about 5000 more websites launch. And those estimates are probably a bit low considering there are currently some 1.7 billion registered sites. No matter how you look at it, getting viewers to pay attention to you online is a struggle.

The best way to get eyes onto your materials according to experts? Inbound marketing. While the term may be one of those work-speak phrases most people aren’t familiar with, I’m sure you are very familiar with the practice.

Inbound Marketing creates reasons for your audience to come to you, instead of blasting out a dearth of generic sales messages (commercials) to a general audience. Your Inbound audience is carefully selected to fit your particular brand and as such will convert to customers much more readily.

Inbound Marketing is a more effective way of bringing people to your brand because it works with them, rather than at them. Studies show that Inbound Marketing costs 61% less than outbound marketing. Businesses that mainly rely on Inbound Marketing save more than $14 for every newly acquired customer.

The 3 basic tenets are attracting, engaging, and delighting. There are lots of steps along the Inbound Marketing pathway, but here are a four of the more actionable strategies you can put to work now.

*Inbound Marketing starts with research. It’s imperative you know what your customer is looking for.*

1) Start with researching your target customer. (Well duh right? But unfortunately most small brands do no research into their customer’s needs and pain points at all). There simply is no Inbound Marketing scenario that is focused on a demographic as general as “women age 21-54”. It’s important to drill down on this demographic and learn what your customer is truly about. In order for most lifestyle brands to be successful they must solve a problem for their client. In order to learn what these problems (or pain points) are we must understand the customer first.

If you’re a skincare brand that sells primarily to women in their mid 30’s-40’s what is it that draws them to you? Are they anxious about lines and wrinkles? Or is it a deeper lifestyle malady that your product solves for them? Are they concerned about ingredients or do they simply buy your brand because it’s the most convenient?

Talk to your current customers and use your Insights on Instagram and Facebook to get a clearer picture of what it is about your brand that attracts consumers. Figure out what their bottom line is in terms of buying your brand and create a strategy that focuses on those selling points.

You can conduct informal surveys on your social media pretty readily, however good results rely on your actual customers seeing your posts which is another issue entirely.

Another idea would be to email your current customers with the offer of a deep discount if they complete a quick survey. While this strategy might seem expensive, the results will prove to be invaluable to your brand in the long run.

You’ll need to decide how large a part SEO is going to play in your Inbound Strategy. Most experts feel that getting discovered on Google in droves is the Holy Grail of marketing, but for lifestyle brands this often is not the case. Consumers looking for affordable handbags usually don’t google the word “handbag” when making their purchase decisions. They are more likely driven to a look or a design because were influenced by a celebrity or a major designer and want a more affordable option. This is why Pinterest is such a driver of traffic to lifestyle sites.

However, a women looking for skincare to combat acne issues won’t necessarily Google “skincare”. She probably would do a search using the description of the particular problems that she faces and work backwards from there.

A blog with rich content will help fuel traffic to your site and a greater understanding of your brand. It will also provide content for email marketing and social media that will be cohesive and speak to your target customer’s pain points.

2) Start a blog and strategize posts so they maximize SEO, Pinterest and Facebook value, and create inbound traffic. Working through the customer scenarios outlined in Step #1, create content that directly speaks to customer’s core issues.

For example if you identified that your customers are concerned with ingredients, create content that focuses on skincare ingredients across the board. Don’t try to kitchen sink your posts (ie answer every question in each article) rather put your content up in bite sized pieces. Make your content easy to get through and put the answers up front so readers will regard you as a knowledge rich resource and come back to you time and again. Don’t make a direct sales pitch in your posts as this will alienate and invalidate your material.

If you’re not a writer don’t fret – blogging doesn’t require exemplary writing skills, but it does take an investment of time to make it worthwhile. If it’s just too much to add to your plate you can also hire a content creator to manage and curate a blog.

Map out a posting schedule that captures your audience’s interests and concerns. Imagine what they will Google and work from there. This will pay off with increased traffic and new oxygen for your brand overall. Make sure your posts are image rich and relevant to what you’re selling so that you can cross post with your social media.

An example of a great visual post if you’re an accessory brand might be a storyboard collection of images pulled from Unsplash and Pinterest that are relevant to a new collection. Get some inspiration from social media and write a few intro sentences that are keyworded to attract what you think people would be searching for. Discuss what inspired you to design the collection or product and how it fits in with current trends.

While word count is important for SEO you don’t want to be so concerned with keyword baiting that you fail to put together readable and enjoyable posts. Many experts recommend writing long, highly detailed data driven blog articles. While these are great for SEO they may not be the best strategy for attracting real-world readers looking for lifestyle content. A modicum of advertising trumps the need for copious keywords and long boring reams of data that may not appeal to your busy audience.

*Launch an Earned Media campaign that combines product placement with profile pieces in a wide array of media.*

3) Launch a PR campaign that focuses on product placements in relevant media to create social proof and backlinks to your site. Professional profiles in business, general interest, and lifestyle media are probably more productive types of placements in terms of driving actual sales to your door. While blogging is essential to any Inbound Marketing plan, PR is by far the biggest driver of brand recognition, sales development, and direct traffic in the marketing arsenal.

Lots of marketing pros consider PR to be an outbound marketing strategy, but nothing could be further from the truth. Public Relations that relies on the dissemination of press releases is not widely practiced anymore. PR relies on working with a network of carefully picked writers and editors to create stories and posts on high ranking blogs and websites that include your brand. In short, it’s Inbound Marketing on steroids.

Ninety-two percent of consumers say they trust earned media (PR placements) over owned or paid media. The reasons are simple, we live in a cult of personality and as such consumers are attracted by, and identify more closely with a brand’s message than ever before. Earned media is an outside, objective voice recommending your brand to your prospective audience. While your blog and social media are owned by you and the messages employed are seen as less objective by the average consumer.

As a publicist of course I’m going to say that, right? But let’s be frank, when I started my firm way back in 1997, it was meant to be a general marketing firm. Originally my goal was to do direct marketing for companies, and since the internet wasn’t a thing back then, my company created direct mail pieces (usually postcards) for architectural and construction companies.

The cards were wildly successful because we were able to hone-in on what each client’s customer wanted and created visuals and messages that struck a cord in the recipient. But as our client list grew the majority of requests were for media placements in relevant design magazines. The postcards were great, but our clients needed some industry proof (what we call social proof these days) that they were the best company to work with. As time went on PR became more important and influential and led to more growth for our clients and direct mail proved to be less effective.

Media placements have been proven time and again to be one the most effective tools in the Inbound Marketing arsenal. By helping future customers discover you in articles and product roundups that they come by themselves you’ll jumpstart the Inbound process.

While lots of marketing pros don’t count social media as PR, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and TikTok are the building blocks of a good publicity campaign.

Likewise guest posting is another form of PR that creates content, but on other, more highly trafficked sites. You can guest post on other media and in-turn invite authors to post on your blog.

*The Inbound Funnel culminates in a healthy email program*

4) Develop an email marketing program through deft list development and enticing offers. If you look at as many sites as we do, you’ve probably learned to reflexively delete the annoying pop up that stops you from browsing most stores and websites. While we have mixed feelings about how these email signup popups are employed, they are effective when done well.

Email marketing is proven to be an evergreen source for massive ROI. It’s estimated that for every $1 spent, email returns an average of $44.25.

Many firms offer freebies, downloadable pdfs, or deep discounts if shoppers/readers hand over their precious email addresses. But what many don’t consider is that most of us have garbage email addresses that we use for just this purpose, and all those well-crafted marketing emails simply fall into an unmanned junk hole once we’ve gotten our discount or tip sheet. This explains why a 20% open rate is considered good in the email marketing industry.

Another strategy is to launch an email course to entice customers to provide a workable email address. Working backwards from the problems you identified in Step #1, create small bits of content that speaks to the issues your customers experience.

You can lift content from posts that you created in Step #2 but personalize it and freshen it for current day issues. For example, a beauty brand may want to speak to the stress surrounding Covid-19 and how it effects skin and health. Your audience will then get sequential emails from you that cover the material you want to offer.

An everyday email strategy must focus on creating compelling must read/see content. Lift content from your ever growing blog and learn to write must-click email subject lines (which is an artform believe me). You’ll remind your audience of your inspiring content with each email.

Many marketers have also employed Facebook Messenger as a method for getting in front of their audience. You can ask consumers to opt into messaging in the same way you ask for their email addresses.

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