Developing the perfect inbound marketing strategy for 2017 can be difficult. While most business owners are focusing on boosting their search engine visibility or writing plenty of blog posts, there are still several other opportunities available. Modern marketing goes far beyond writing interesting content and properly placing keywords. If you aren’t sure where to start with your digital marketing campaign, use one of these creative suggestions.

The Importance of Influencers

While it is still possible to assert yourself as an authority in your industry, influencers have a pre-existing, finely-tuned following. Identifying and associating yourself with key influencers within your industry is a great way to kickstart your followers or subscribers. In most cases, simply contacting an influencer and offering them a demonstration or sample of your services can be enough to get them talking about you.

Don’t worry too much about your influencer’s total number of followers or subscribers. Because each follower is highly engaged with the influencer, they are more likely to respond to your brand. This can be a great way to get traffic, make sales, or simply grow your online presence.

Promote Customer Advocacy, Not Products

Finding the right way to market yourself in 2017 can be very difficult. Consumers are much more savvy and they are far less likely to follow people who simply push products. This doesn’t mean you can’t promote individual products and services on social media; it means you need more diverse content.

Focusing more on customers and how they respond to your services can go a long way in an inbound marketing campaign. Show how your existing customers are reacting to your product. If someone posts a picture of themselves using your service, like and share it.

In addition to focusing more on customer use, you should also focus on presenting solutions to common problems your audience faces. Present solutions that your existing customers can use to enhance their experience with you. By doing so, you are increasing your repeat customers and showing new buyers that you truly care about them.

Build Better Offers

One inbound marketing tactic popular in the past few years is creating multiple offers to entice a wider range of people. While multiple offers are still recommended in most campaigns, businesses need to focus on the offers themselves, starting from the ground up.

Take a look at your basic package or service and analyze the value. Find ways to enhance this value to entice more entry-level buyers. While it can be tempting to set your base price high and offer discounts only to those who buy more, offering small bonuses can go a long way. If you can, try experimenting with a sample-size package or adding a small bonus to your offer, such as a downloadable eBook. The better the value seems, the more likely people are to respond.

Don’t be afraid to scrap offers that just aren’t working, even if you feel the package is needed to justify your prices. For example, if your basic and most advanced package are doing well, you may not need a middle offer at all. If your basic package isn’t doing well but your mid-level and advanced packages are, try revamping the basic or eliminating it entirely.

Update Your Website

Having a frequently-updated website can go a long way in terms of inbound marketing. While most of your visitors won’t be looking for the copyright date on your sales page, they can easily identify an out-of-date website. For an extreme example, compare a website created in the late 1990’s to one made last week. You’ll see an immediate style difference. This can be incredibly distracting as a reader and can look unprofessional.

Follow respected designers and certain design agencies online to see website design trends and make changes when appropriate. You don’t have to update your website every day, but you should frequently examine the structure to make sure it looks fresh and appealing.

Don’t Be Afraid to Break Away

Part of inbound marketing is going with what works. In some industries, standard techniques either don’t work or are ineffective. For example, short blog posts wouldn’t have the same impact on a how-to or tutorial website. While the ideal blog post is between 300 and 500 words, you shouldn’t be afraid to go above and beyond.

In some cases, writing thousands of words can still help you funnel traffic and generate leads. Most website viewers only want their questions answered and will read what you write if it applies to them. Writing engaging content, regardless of length, keyword count, or other SEO-tactics can be the best way to build long-term relationships with your readers.

Don’t Forget to Track Your Progress

Inbound marketing has become a very sophisticated process and there are plenty of online tools that can help you. Utilize services like Google Analytics to track your marketing campaign and discover what works and what doesn’t.

Aside from tracking basic metrics, you should analyze which tactics bring you the biggest return on investment. Sometimes the cheapest inbound marketing techniques can bring the best results.

If a campaign isn’t working out as planned, don’t feel obligated to see it through. Many online marketing services allow you to cancel campaigns and apply the funding to a different ad. In fact, most pay-per-click offers allow you to change quickly or only charge you per day. This allows you to adjust your campaign as needed to get only the best results.

Inbound marketing is still a very complex topic, but there are plenty of simple tips and tricks that can work wonders.