The power that buyers have over the marketing and sales process has increased significantly. If you want your company to be successful in the long term, you can’t just rely on cold calling and generic advertising. You need to attract potential customers to your company with content that is valuable and helpful, and then encourage them to become customers.
Inbound marketing puts customers in the center of your company’s efforts and sets your business up for long-term success. While it may not have the same initial impact as outbound methods, inbound will continue to be beneficial long after your initial investment. In addition, the potential customers that you attract through inbound marketing are usually a better match for your business and have a higher lifetime value.
According to Guido Bartolacci, Head of Demand Generation at New Breed, the work you’re doing today with inbound marketing will have benefits that extend weeks or months into the future. “Whereas outbound is kind of the opposite. You will immediately benefit from this and understand why it worked for us, but it will not have a lasting effect on you.
Here are nine steps to take if you want to change your marketing strategy from one focused on the short term to one that will help your company succeed in the long term.
1. Set Expectations for the Transition Within Your Company
Outbound and inbound marketing produce different results, and you will need to prepare the rest of your company to reflect that. Digital outbound methods produce short-term, direct results. Although inbound takes longer to produce results, it is more effective in the long run than outbound marketing. Inbound can be difficult to measure, but ultimately has a greater impact.
When transitioning to inbound selling, you may not want to stop using outbound selling tactics immediately. If you stop your outbound marketing efforts at the same time that you start your inbound marketing efforts, you will not have any marketing gaining traction for a couple of weeks or even months. It will take time for your inbound marketing to take off.
As you start to transition to or layer in inbound marketing, you will need to have something already established to maintain your current pace, according to Guido. You won’t be able to turn off outbound messaging and turn on inbound messaging with a clean switch like that.
As your inbound marketing efforts begin to show results, you can reduce your dependence on outbound marketing, and eventually rely primarily on inbound marketing for generating leads.
One way to ensure a smooth transition when implementing inbound marketing at your company is to plan and define in advance how it will work: what tactics will you start out with? How will you balance inbound and outbound efforts? You should ensure that everyone in the company knows what is expected of them.
2. Understand Your Funnel and Lifecycle Stages
The marketing and sales funnel is a process that visualizes how potential customers are attracted to your company and then nurtured until they make a purchase. At the top of the funnel, you have people who are visiting your site anonymously. When a potential customer is moving through the stages of your sales process, they are becoming more informed about what your company has to offer, and you are also gaining a better understanding of their individual needs.
When a prospect transitions from MQL to SQL, they become a sales pipeline and once they close as customers, they become the center of your inbound flywheel.
Within the funnel, there are six lifecycle stages:
- Visitor: Anonymous people who have shown interest in your content
- Lead: Contacts who have provided your company with information about themselves
- MQL: Leads that marketing thinks are a good fit for your product or service
- SQL: Leads that sales thinks are good fits and worth pursuing
- Opportunity: Prospects who are considering your solution and in talks with sales
- Customer: People who’ve committed to a business engagement with your company
Although the details of what each stage means will differ from one company to the next, it’s still crucial to find out what actions cause each lifecycle stage for your potential customers. The triggers could be based on a prospect’s fit with the company, their interests, or their behaviors.
3. Define Your Buyer Personas
Buyer Personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer. They help you see your target market for your marketing efforts.
In order to be successful in sales, Guido says that you need to understand your target audience, what they care about, and where they can be found online. Additionally, you need to be prepared to help them in some way.
Personas that buyers create contain both demographic and firmographic data, as well as information on the motivations and challenges they face daily.
Guido states that if you have a better understanding of your prospect, you are more likely to be able to produce content that they will find relatable and enjoyable.
By understanding your target audience, you will be able to develop content that resonates with them. This understanding will allow you to create a content strategy that will attract your personas to your website and help them progress through the buyer’s journey. The sequences of content that guide your personas through the sales process are called conversion paths.
4. Develop Inbound Content,
In order to create an effective inbound marketing campaign, you need to first identify your target audience. Once you know who you want to reach, you can develop a content strategy that will guide them through the process from their current state to the desired outcome.
If you want to be successful with inbound marketing, you need to have enough content to satisfy each buyer persona’s conversion path.
Conversion paths contain three types of content:
- Top-of-the-funnel (ToFu) content focuses on educating prospects about their challenges and is typically in the form of blog posts, social media content or short videos
- Middle-of-the-funnel (MoFu) content goes a little more in-depth on your personas’ pain points and starts to present potential solutions. This is typically in the form of guides,ebooks, checklists, templates and webinars
- Bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFu) content works to convince prospects that your company and your solution is the best choice for them. BoFu content includes product walkthroughs, case studies and personalized assessments
If you want to create content, you will need to hire new team members or outsource the creation process.
5. Use Infographics
Some people just don’t have the time to read a whole blog article. If your audience is in the same group, you can use infographics.
An infographic is a combination of graphic elements and written content. It allows businesses to briefly present their ideas. An infographic is an image that contains information that is condensed into one visually appealing image.
Infographics can be extremely helpful in terms of promoting learning and providing key information. According to Forbes, powerpoints are the most popular, followed by articles with images and blog posts.
If you want to show value or present a unique idea to your customers and prospects, infographics are one of the best ways to do so. If you’re not sure how to make these types of images, don’t give up. Instead of hiring a company to design your graphics, you could hire freelance designers who would be able to better cater to your idea.
Rather than discussing each point in a blog form, they used colorful graphics to engage the audience and make the document more visually appealing so that readers would want to read the whole thing. Although the points are brief, they are still informative. This made the infographic and content easy to read.
6. Use The Virality Potential Of Videos
If you want your content to have a high chance of going viral, create video content. Many businesses outsource videographers to create and release video content. Some people create videos on their own using free online video maker software.
Videos are more engaging than a static image and a set of paragraphs. Businesses can more easily express themselves through video than with any other format. They make product videos to show their item’s best features.
But not every video is created equally. How long the text needs to be to engage and resonate with people will depend on the target market. Some businesses find that their audiences prefer videos that are one minute or less. As for others, their audience likes a longer format.
If you do not know what your customers like, you should test it yourself. Look at what type of videos they watch the most. If you have seen which metric is most successful, continue to do what is working and has the most engagement.
Once you’ve figured out how long your audience prefers their videos, you can start experimenting with what type of content they prefer most. Do they love tutorials, how-to guides, or quick explanations?
In addition to advertisements, video content can also include webinars and online conferences with customers.
7. Influencer Marketing
Many brands are not aware of how powerful these influencers are. Some influencers have earned a devoted following who are very loyal to them. Therefore, businesses budget for influencer marketing.
Having both inbound marketing and influencer marketing is such a great combination that research shows 86% of marketers use this strategy.
The reason this combination is effective is that audiences don’t feel like they’re being sold to when they hear it from their favorite influencer.
Although it is common for businesses to market their products, consumers often believe that businesses do this primarily to benefit themselves financially. If a person they admire tells them about a product, they’re more likely to see it as a recommendation than a sales pitch.
The payment structure could differ per business. A brand can approach an influencer to discuss the possibility of the influencer becoming an affiliate of the brand’s business. They will create a referral program or an affiliate structure that will be beneficial for both sides.
8. Give Freebies
One option you have for promoting your business is to give away free digital resources like blog posts and videos.
Consumers are naturally drawn to free things. Why do we have free tastes in groceries and free promos in shopping malls?
The purpose of giving out free digital products is twofold: you gain attention and provide potential customers with a preview of your business.
If you’re a personal brand that teaches SEO marketing, you can give your books away as a free PDF. They will look for more of your content if they enjoy what you have already provided. This is the perfect opportunity to mention your other books or services.
Although digital products may be the most common type of freebie, your clients will appreciate other types of freebies as well, such as free consultation or an hour of your time.
You’re not forcing your business on customers by giving out free things. It’s the consumers that are naturally coming to you. People will come back for more if they like what they received.
9. Search Engine Optimize Everything
The best way to end an inbound marketing strategy section is to make sure everything is optimized for search engines.
One way to avoid being too forward is to appear on search engines. You want your website to be on the first page of Google whenever your target audience is searching for keywords that relate to your business.
Although it is difficult, it is not impossible to achieve a high rank on Google. To improve your ranking, make sure all your online content is optimized.
As a content creator, you need to ensure that your content is optimized, whether it be blog posts or videos. Here are a few ways to do so:
- Make original content
- Picking the right keywords
- Add meta descriptions
- Insert meta tags
- Add relevant links
- Construct attention-grabbing titles
- Use headings properly
- Include call-to-actions
- Make it engaging
- Promote the content
Conclusion
Inbound marketing strategies are effective in attracting customers because they do not make customers feel like they are being sold to. The strategies in this article are designed to be educational and engaging, and are something that consumers actively seek out.
Inbound marketing can be very effective in bringing sales and growing your business if it is done correctly and you allocate enough time to it.
Related posts:
