Access Media Productions is a full service video production and recording studio based in the heart of downtown Dallas, in Deep Ellum. We’re here to talk about leveraging media for your marketing endeavors using what’s regarded as possibly the single most effective marketing technique for any business in any industry: inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing is not a new concept. It’s been regarded as likely the most effective marketing technique for any business or professional since its conception in the mid-2000s, and some of its core ideas are now seen as “Step 1” for any startup. Yet, there are many businesses out there that are still not taking advantage of the tried-and-true system. We’ve asked ourselves why, and the way we see it, there are two possibilities: either you don’t know what it is or you don’t know how to start. Let’s begin with the former.

Inbound Marketing – what is it?

Inbound marketing is, in a nutshell, the concept of providing content to attract customers to you. “Attracting people to you” is the key part here, and is why they call it “inbound” marketing. We’ll talk about why it’s so powerful in a moment, but first, let’s talk about what it looks like.

Usually, content comes in the form of social media and blogging or vlogging about material relevant to your industry. After you attract your audience with content they’re interested in, then you can show them how to act on what they learned: work with or buy from you! This article itself is an example of inbound marketing, because it’s content Access Media Productions’ audience (you!) would be interested in. It also informs you about something that you benefit from and can act on by working with us. Relevant, high quality content not only attracts people to you to begin with, but it also keeps people coming back. If you’re a thought leader in your field, people in your industry will visit your content for advice, inspiration, or otherwise to glean something useful from you. This is great for your views and engagements as well as building your brand image as someone valuable who knows what they’re doing. You can imagine why having a positive “expert” image would be useful.

All this content and attention naturally makes cake of your SEO. With search engines like Google and Bing, there are hundreds of factors that add up to a picture of relevancy when someone performs a query that you’d like to pop up for. Some of the most important factors are quality content, backlinks to your site click-through rates when you do pop up. Effective content covers all your bases. You’ll increase traffic to your site and engagement with your posts and social media, while all at the same time giving search engines more of a reason to rank you higher and for more queries.

How does inbound marketing work?

There are a dozen reasons why inbound marketing works, and we know it’s a lot to take in, so here’s a quick outline:

1. Posting content relevant to your industry allows search engines to see that you or your brand are relevant to the industry. The keywords and metadata that you use in a post or video will help you rank for your primary cornerstone keywords. You’ll also have the chance to use your cornerstone keywords’ synonyms and even entirely new keywords that might not appear often or at all throughout your site! This further helps your ranking and can broaden your online presence. It’ll also paint the picture of what you do and showcase what makes you relevant both to search engines and your audience.
2. When you do pop up on search engines, relevant, powerful content will encourage viewers to click on your result. As your click-through rate increases, Google views your website as a quality, “trustworthy” result and in turn ranks you higher.
3. Your content will attract consumers to your social media or website. Your style of content can have different effects (especially when we’re talking primarily informative vs primarily entertaining), but generally all content will help:
   • raise awareness for you/your brand
   • establish you/your brand’s image – often as an authority or thought leader in the industry
   • enlighten your audience about something that you or your business can help them with
   • make consumers want to revisit your social media or website later, and/or tell their connections about you
   • make consumers stay on your website for longer and potentially explore your site more, which boosts your search engine rankings and allows you more opportunity to capture their business
4. As your online presence grows, your audience grows and thus your engagement and site traffic grows. This creates a high velocity SEO cycle: the more your audience grows and engages, the higher and more often you rank on search engines, further growing your audience and engagement… Are you seeing the pattern now?
5. Here’s the kicker: Collecting leads from your now bubbling audience is easier than ever and much more worthwhile because you know that all of these leads are very highly qualified and are likely to do business with you. After all, why wouldn’t they want to work with a knowledgeable, trustworthy brand or professional like yourself that sells or does something that we know they’re interested in?

Did you get that last part? This is why inbound marketing is so powerful – you’re putting yourself in front of the people that matter to you, and all you had to do was offer up content that’s relevant to you.

What about traditional marketing techniques?

Inbound marketing directly contradicts “outbound,” or traditional marketing endeavors. These include TV ads, billboards, magazine and newspaper ads. Perhaps the biggest reason those methods are losing popularity is because they are relatively abrasive.

Consumers are usually doing something completely unrelated to an outbound ad when they see one such as watching TV, reading an article or driving on the highway. The ad is designed to interrupt what they’re doing and capture their attention. That right there is a big culprit to the decline of outbound. The ads are usually completely irrelevant to what consumers are doing or thinking when they see those ads, and consumers nowadays are naturally pretty talented at ignoring them to carry on with what they’re doing. The fight for attention and the push for action can easily come across with a “hard sell” attitude – something that many consumers are turned off by. Furthermore, an outbound ad generally doesn’t offer much – you’ll see the ad, maybe click on it or call the company, but that’s it. The interaction or relationship begins and ends with the one ad.

Inbound marketing offers a way for you to become a relevant part of a consumer’s life; one that they seek out and want to engage with. Rather than interrupting a consumer’s activities, you offer them an activity instead! It’s much less abrasive in that way, and encourages the consumer to trust and engage with you on their own will. It offers them a way to be informed or entertained, learn about you and your business, and usually creates an exceptionally smooth transition into your funnel as a lead. Their perception of you or your brand and their understanding that you can help them (whether directly as a sale/client or just via your content) creates a positive relationship with you and your consumer – something that every business or professional should strive for.

Great. So how do I do it?

Now that you know all about the “why,” let’s talk about the “how.” All you need to start is content. There are three major forms of content that have been shown to be effective: video, podcast and good ol’ text like the article you’re reading.

Text

Text content is a great place to start. You can spend as little or as much time writing as you see fit, they’re very accessible to consumers and well-written articles can have a major impact. There’s no reason not to begin a blog on your website or begin posting on social media, so we suggest you start here.

Podcast

Podcast (audio-only, that is), is a great way to build up a reputation as well. The great thing about podcast is that you can talk about anything at all for as long as you like, and it’s potentially the easiest to consume as your audience can listen in the car, while working out, at home while they cook dinner… You can be with them anywhere they go! The podcasting industry has experienced an unprecedented surge in popularity thanks to modern platforms like Spotify, iTunes and the plethora of other online podcast web hosting services.

One downside to audio-only podcast is that it’s not well suited for most forms of ads. Consumers have to listen to it to get the idea, unlike text where you can read it or video where you can see it. Podcast is best used as content that you would drive consumers to – not as the content that you’d use to drive consumers to your site or social media.

It’s also a little more involved than writing up a great article (like this one!), but Access Media Productions makes it very simple and inexpensive for you to create and release your podcast. Our Dallas recording studios are spacious enough to contain as many hosts as you can come up with plus your guests, and offer some of the best equipment and staff a show could ask for. If you have or would like to start an audio-only podcast, visit our Content Creator Program page for studio memberships or our All Access Recording Studios page for direct pricing and info.

Video

Video content, however, is the single most powerful tool available for inbound marketers. You can find a slew of information about why video is so important and how you can use it on our Our Work page found in our site’s main menu.

Text has one major, albeit simple, flaw: it’s much more work to read an article than it is to watch a video. Studies have shown that when given the option, 20% of consumers will read text and 80% will decide to watch video about the same subject (My SMN, 2017); from that, we can safely say that most consumers prefer to watch video than to read. If your goal is to inform, video is an excellent way to keep your audience’s interest, and if your goal is to entertain, video is absolutely a necessity.

We also talked a lot about inbound marketing’s effect on your SEO, so get this: video on your website makes you 53x more likely to appear not only on the first page, but as the first result when someone performs a relevant search on Google. That makes video nothing less than a game changer for any website, and if you’re practicing inbound marketing, you’re adding high-octane fuel to the flames by utilizing video for your content.

Access Media Productions specializes in video production, and we even have our own giant film studios complete with a three sided cyclorama wall, green screens, black screens, broadcast cameras, you name it! If you need video for inbound marketing, we strongly encourage you to visit our Content Creator Program page to learn about our studio memberships. You can work with us regularly for consistent, high quality content for as little as $180 per month. We even offer services like live streaming to Facebook and YouTube for the marketing professionals who’d like to really give their social media something to chew on! We have everything you need, from the facilities and equipment to the knowhow to get you or your business up and running with inbound marketing.