Inbound marketing is a marketing methodology/technic which attracts customers in a “natural way” via creating valuable and tailor-made content, social media marketing and search engine optimization.
Today we´ll analyze the inbound marketing methods based on the comparison of the two following companies:
Brown Engish: https://brownsenglish.edu.au/
English Wise: https://englishwise.com.au/
It´s very important to detect the target audience or “buyer persona” and to adopt the inbound marketing strategy to each stage of buying cycle: awareness, consideration, decision, loyal customer and recommendation of a bought product or service to friends.
“Buyer personas” of these organizations are more likely to be overseas students, 18-30 y.o., interested in improving their English level. Both organizations have a good web design and a contrasting call to action (CTA) on their websites.
Engaging content
Both companies offer free relative information on their website as a part of their inbound marketing strategy.
In Brown English, they offer a free online English level test, while English Wise offers free trial lessons. Both in exchange for clients contact information. We´ve tested CTA (call to action) forms of these services for both organizations and received follow up messages quickly, however, the content of both follow-up emails could contain additional CTA to engage customers more. For example, offering clients some valuable reading on their blog page or asking them whether come additional information can be provided by a customer service team.
Mobile access
Both organizations have a working mobile version of the website with different types of relevant content available: text and images, video content and blog. English Wise has a chat-bot, which is a huge positive point for the user’s experience as it provides immediate customer attention.
Social media
Social media strategy is an important part of inbound marketing strategy. As mentioned before the age of “buyer personas” of these 2 organizations is the age of users with the highest social media engagement level.
English Wise has got only Facebook and Instagram profiles. Its social media strategy can be improved by regular posting on Instagram and Facebook, adding more creative content and adding CTA; by adding to the Instagram profile the information about the company, IGTV videos, 24 hours stories.
Brown English has a more significant presence on social media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. YouTube video content is a big plus as it’s the type of content most preferred by their “buyer personas”. The organization has IGTV video on Instagram, saved stories, more frequent post publishing than English Wise. Brown English could improve by the connection and integration between all available social media accounts and the website, adding CTA on Instagram and Facebook, adding more frequent stories, and releasing regularly new videos on YouTube.
Both organizations could improve their social media presence significantly by interacting with their audience and creating giveaways, contests, questionnaires. They could also implement the inbound marketing strategy on their social media channels simply by taking the same piece of content they offer on their website and putting it in a different format on social media: check-lists, guides and so on.
SEO
Brown English SEO ranking is higher than the English Wise’s, however, both organizations would need to take the following actions to improve their SEO:
- Hreflang: There is no possibility to choose multiple countries or languages. In my opinion for English courses product, it’s highly likely that their targeted audience is not fluent in English.
- Meta descriptions: Brown English has about 10% duplicates, English Wise: around 52 % of meta descriptions are missing.
- Meta keywords: 32% of meta keywords missing by Brown English, 99% missing by English Wise.
- Page titles: Brown English – ok. English Wise needs to improve it: about 20 % are duplicated.
- H1-H2: Brown English 72% of H2 are duplicated or not optimized. English Wise: 40% of H1 are missing, 63% of H2 are duplicated.
- It´s recommended for both organizations to add more organic keywords.
Content strategy
As part of their inbound marketing, Brown English has done great work with their blog, which counts with lots of interesting and relevant topics. To promote it they could add share buttons for social media. English Wise should add more posts and more topics to their blog. So far, their content strategy is not well developed.
In conclusion, I must say that both organizations have put lots of efforts for their inbound marketing strategy, although, Brown English progressed more in this: it has better SEO, better-developed content strategy, more presence on social media channels, more regular post updating on social media platforms than English Wise. However, to improve and to structure its inbound strategy, the organization needs “to integrate” their efforts between different inbound marketing channels and, of course, to focus more on its SEO as the main source of the organic=free traffic and therefore an important part of any inbound strategy.
Digital marketing blog 