You’ve spent entirely too much on your pay per click campaigns. And what have you gained? Maybe a few leads?

You just don’t know what you’re doing wrong, but you’re frustrated.

Does this sound familiar?

Maybe it’s time to start looking down other alleyways for marketing opportunities. Why not try inbound marketing.

Today, most of life is connected to the internet in some way. In fact, 80% of U.S. citizens are “online.”

Using the internet’s own structure to market might seem like a simple answer, but it’s just not as obvious to some people as you’d think. This is what we call inbound marketing.

Here’s the three pillars of inbound marketing.

1. On-Site Content Marketing

While some claim this isn’t the same as inbound marketing, I beg to differ. How else are you bringing leads directly to your site without paying Google?

Content marketing does a few things. It establishes you as the expert in your niche. When done well, it acts as part of your marketing funnel, sliding customers into your end point. And it answers your leads questions, bringing them closer to converting to sales.

2. SEO Marketing

This second pillar goes hand-in-hand with content marketing. It’s an essential part of your inbound marketing plan (read more here about inbound marketing plans).

SEO is basically the formatting and on-page optimization that will increase your search visibility. When you type in a search term, Google gives you a list of links. Google ranks those links by how well they give you what you want.

People study what Google ranks and try to backwards engineer how Google ranks. This is where SEOs get their optimization knowledge.

3. Social Media Marketing

The goal with all of this is “organic” traffic. You want people to come to your page because they want to. And people spend a large portion of their time online using social media.

If you want to catch the fish, you must go to where the fish are. This means creating social accounts for your business. This means creating social media content for your social accounts.

A few examples of social media content includes 60-second videos, memes, blogs, tweets, creative stories, etc.

By Ben Mattice

Benjamin Mattice is a freelance writer/editor, horror and sci-fi writer, SEO and affiliate marketing newbie, dog wrestler, cat wrangler, capoeirista, and long distance runner. He lives in the Palouse with his wife, three dogs, two cats, and two rats. Yes, that would probably be considered a mini-zoo.