How To Build An Empire With Inbound Marketing
The internet has become the primary channel through which marketing activities are being conducted. Businesses are continuing to realize that most of their potential customers are spending more time online than on traditional print media such as magazines and newspapers.
In order for businesses to reach a wider audience online, it is important for them to implement internet marketing strategies that will allow them to appeal to potential customers. A big part of this is inbound marketing.
Inbound Marketing
Let’s talk inbound. In the times that we’re in, customers have all the power. Gone are the days when businesses existed as monopolies that had the privilege of shoving their products down customers’ throats. As businesses compete fiercely for an ever-decreasing market share, they have realized that they need to implement more creative and adaptable ways of marketing in order to reach out to a wider audience online.
One of these ways is inbound marketing, which is my absolute favourite form of strategic digital marketing. Further, we can define inbound marketing as the collection of activities aimed at driving traffic to a business’s website and attracting more potential customers (read “generating leads for nurturing”). The success of inbound marketing has caused 44% of B2B marketers to implement an inbound marketing strategy (according to the content marketing institute).
Inbound marketing is a broad activity that involves many different aspects of a business as it seeks to establish a strong online presence.
Part of the activities that fall under inbound marketing include:
- Content marketing
- Lead nurturing
- Website re-design to make a website contain search engine optimized content and strategic landing pages for incoming traffic
Content Marketing
Customers have taken the power in their hands. They do not want to be told when and where to buy products through those interruptive ads that businesses slap in-between TV shows, sports games, and concerts. They purchase products when they are ready, and they purchase them in order to satisfy a need that they may have or to solve a problem that they are facing.
Content marketing is, therefore, the strategy of creating attractive and relevant content on your online platforms so that customers can find you when they come looking. The working principle behind content marketing is to create material (on blogs, web pages, and social media) that is unique, relevant and addresses the pain points of your potential customers.
In this way, people who search for any information that pertains to your products and services will be redirected to your online platforms, especially if your content is SEO optimized. In fact, content marketing goes hand in hand with a website redesign and the creation of appropriate landing pages. It is a great way of increasing traffic and generating leads for nurturing.
Lead Nurturing
So you have re-designed your website to become a traffic driving machine and the ultimate resource for your customers. But how can you turn this into tangible results, i.e. sales? Lead nurturing is the answer. Lead nurturing is the process through which relationships are maintained with potential customers throughout the buying cycle. From the time a prospect lands on your website looking for helpful content, they should immediately become a target for nurturing.
You will find that different prospects are at different stages in the buying cycle. Some are almost ready to make a purchase, while others are still researching their options. The nurturing process involves taking active steps to determine where each prospect is located in the buying cycle (through a lead scoring system) and targeting them with content that they will find relevant at that particular stage.
According to Forrester Research, properly nurturing your leads until they are ready to make a purchase leads to a 50% increase in sales at 33% lower cost.
So there you have it, a brief overview of what inbound marketing is all about. This is indeed the current and the future of marketing. People want real relevant content that speaks to their needs at the right time. Get rid of those annoying TV ads and snail mail that takes forever to get to your customers, this is the real strategy folks.
Until next Time,
-Amanda