Attract: Inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people toward your organization— where they naturally want to be

The inbound methodology is the best way to turn strangers into audiences and promoters. For the past decade, inbound marketing has been the most effective online marketing method. Instead of old outbound marketing methods, such as buying ads, inbound marketing methods align the content you publish with your audiences’s interests. You naturally attract inbound traffic that you can then convert.

The graphic below features four actions: Attract, Convert, Close, and Delight. Organizations doing inbound marketing must take these actions in order to obtain visitors, leads, customers and promoters.

Attract

You don’t want just any traffic to your site—you want the right traffic. You want the people who are most likely to become leads, and, ultimately, happy customers or donors. Who are the “right” people? They are your ideal audiences, also known as your buyer personas. Buyer personas are holistic ideals of the audiences you are trying to target. Personas encompass the demographic information of that particular customer type. Your personas are the people around whom your whole organization relies on. Some of the most important tools to attract the right users to your site are:

1. Attract: Blogging

At the cornerstone of inbound marketing is the creation of blog articles optimized to get found and generate leads. The more you blog, the more you’ll get noticed. It’s that simple.

2. Attract: Social Media

You must share your remarkable content and valuable information on the social web. By engaging with your prospects, you put a human face on your brand. Interact on the networks where your ideal audiences spend their time.

Publishing and tracking traffic to the content on your site is essential for the inbound methodology. Always publish across multiple platforms and monitor the social activity of your leads and customers.

3. Attract: SEO

People begin their buying process online, usually by using a search engine to answer their questions. You need to make sure you’re appearing prominently when they search. To get there, carefully pick keywords, optimize your pages, create content, and build links around the terms that your ideal audiences search for.

4. Attract: Website Pages

You must optimize your website to appeal to and speak with your ideal audiences. Transform your website into a beacon of helpful content to entice the right strangers to visit.