Today we live in a world of educated consumers. They learn about products and services on their own time and at their own pace. People don’t want to be bothered by cold calls, direct mail, print ads and other forms of traditional advertising.
Here are 2 stats that demonstrate what’s really going on now:
- 44% of all direct mail is never opened
- Less than 2% of cold calls result in a meeting
Why use inbound marketing?
So, how do you reach out to your desired audience and target market in the current business environment? The web ofcourse! Google processes more than 40,000 queries every second on an average. It’s clear that buyers are in the driver’s seat for researching and deciding who to contact when they are ready to buy.
What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is the vehicle that introduces prospects to your company and helps build a relationship with them. It aligns itself with the self learning savvy consumer of today, allowing them to source a topic, product or service without any intrusive sales talk.
Builds credibility and trust
Through Inbound Marketing companies can build credibility and trust with their visitors who are looking for solutions to their problems. It utilizes a variety of effective online features like SEO, blogs and social media etc. to engage them and turn them into leads, and ideally, your customers.
Inbound impacts your bottom line in many ways
- Attracts traffic
- Converts visitors into leads
- Converts leads into sales
- Helps new customers become repeat customers
- Analyzes information for continued improvement of service
Content: the Holy Grail of inbound marketing
The golden rule is to create memorable content. This means providing your audience with interesting and valuable information that is delivered, ideally, in an entertaining manner. Your content must be optimized and distributed easily across a number of online channels so that it can be easily found by your prospects.
Appealing content should never be “pluggy” or promotional. It should be useful and educational, and help your potential customer deal with a business challenge, overcome some common industry hurdle, and/or achieve a goal or aspiration.
In order to gain credibility and be seen as a trusted resource, your content should be information that is:
- High quality
- Inspiring
- Share-able
- Relevant to your prospective customers
Popular content vehicles
Content can be created and shared on your own website, third-party sites and across social media where your intended customers can find you. Content can be written and fashioned into a variety of deliverables, such as:
- Blogs
- Premium Content i.e. white papers, case studies, reference guides
- Videos, live streamed events and podcasts
- Slide shows
- Ebooks
Inbound marketing as a revenue generator
Inbound Marketing has shown to have a positive impact on creation of new business. These can include:
- Lead Generation
- Sales Growth
- ROI Analysis
How your company benefits from inbound marketing
Inbound marketing has quickly become one of the most effective ways of doing business online. It can help you reach prospects that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to attract, and pulls them towards your company, product or service.
Inbound marketing provides you with the opportunity to “meet and shake hands” with potential buyers online, engage them, and turn them into leads. This then gives you the ability to convert them to customers, thus boosting your bottom line. Used creatively and correctly, inbound marketing not only turns visitors into customers, it can turn them into key promoters of your brand.
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