HOW ADWORDS IMPACTS INBOUND MARKETING
Inbound marketing is about creating a valuable experience for your audience. It attracts, engages and delights. Most marketers debate on if Adwords is part of this process. I'm here to tell you that it most certainly is part of inbound marketing. Ads target users at the right time and place, presenting answers and solutions to questions. These ads attract users to your website and help marketers to move them further through the buyer's journey.
IT'S ABOUT THE CONTENT
Adwords is an important way to amplify your content. Depending on how you are managing the Adwords' campaigns, you can dominate search results by placing your ads at the top. However, you need to factor in search intent for everything you do on the web. The ads mean nothing if they are not showing value.
Since organic rankings is a long-term approach, Adwords is a faster way of gathering that data. By writing your ads around the topics that are on your website, you can gather data to see what is inspiring your audience to take action. This will not only help you to create compelling content, but it will also help you to create meta data that will motivate clicks. This is one of the many reasons why I believe organic and paid search efforts need to work together.
Adwords gets to the point when it comes to metrics. It's results-based, so you'll see the relationship between how much you're spending to how many leads you're actually generating. If your ads are gathering a lot of leads and they are not converting, then there is definitely something wrong with your inbound marketing strategy.
YOUR WEBSITE NEEDS TO CREATE A JOURNEY
A website can be organized by the modern-day funnel. Every web page has a purpose, so every web page should be a stage within the funnel. For example, product pages are typically for those users in the evaluation stage. These users are looking for product details and want to speak with a sales person. Most likely, your Adwords' campaigns are targeting users in this stage because you are bidding on keywords that are targeting users ready to make a decision. Therefore, while these users are ready to make a decision, they may or may not trust your brand, which is why it's important to have trust symbols on these pages, such as certifications and testimonials.
There are times when a marketer will create an Adwords' campaign for content downloads. If you are driving these users to a web page that does not answer their questions immediately, you are not going to get those conversions. It's imperative that these landing pages demonstrate that you do have the answer and that they too can have it by downloading your white paper or another form of gated content. These web pages are for those in the awareness stage when it comes to your brand. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to ask them to buy, which is what you would do if they landed on a product page.
For the most part, all marketing channels are paid media. More and more industry leaders are seeing how there is a correlation between paid and organic, which is why marketing companies are saying you shouldn't have one without the other. Both are about answering questions and providing value. Inbound marketing is any kind of marketing that reaches customers when they go looking for something to buy. That is why an integrated approach is essential. It's about providing value, which is ultimately going to be what sells your brand.
