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Inbound Marketing Blog Series: Introduction

Posted by Andy Evanko

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May 20, 2014

It’s the year 2014 and, like it or not, the marketing world has changed.  It is now more challenging than ever to place a display ad in a newspaper, phonebook, billboard, magazine, or even run a TV or radio spot and get heard. These in-your-face marketing practices that interrupt your day are slowly becoming more and more tuned out by the potential buyer.  Traditional selling was done by cold calls and cold emails.   While these traditional marketing practices should serve as a component of your marketing budget, marketing managers should look to change with the times by first, focusing online and into the digital world of marketing and, second, attract ideal customers “into” their website using inbound marketing.                                                                                                                                                       

What is inbound marketing?  It is using relevant, targeted, and engaging content to attract, convert, close, and retain interested buyers about your business’s products or services.  This isn’t just any old content either.  This is content that we, as inbound marketers, create for your business.  This allows the right content to be found and accessed by your target customer when they are searching online in places like Google, Bing and Yahoo for answers to their questions.  Inbound marketing empowers your prospects with educational content that your ideal buyer wants to consume.  In doing this, you share a wealth of knowledge about your products and services to all your potential customers.  However, inbound marketing campaigns have many moving parts and, for it to be successful in attracting new leads and closing sales, the correct channels and systems must be put in place to continuously attract, convert, close, and delight customers.

 

Are you are struggling with any of these business issues?

  • Top line revenue not growing fast enough to meet your long term goals.
  • Not sure how to get the most bang for your buck with a limited marketing budget.
  • Volume of website traffic is too low to generate enough leads to grow the business.
  • Advertising & trade show budgets used to generate a much higher ROI than they do today.

 

If these are the kinds of challenges you are facing today, you are not alone.  Industry data suggests that the main contributor to these challenges is a result of a paradigm shift in the B-to-B and B-to-C sales process from

          (Prospect - Sales Rep)   to   (Prospect - Search Engine - Sales Rep)

What worked well in the old days, 4 years ago, no longer seems as effective.  To address this paradigm shift companies must adopt the internet as their core marketing strategy.  Doing so will allow your brand to engage with prospects much earlier in the sales cycle. 

The goal of the internet strategy is to attract more visitors to your website, where they can be converted to leads to grow the business.  You do that by creating an abundance of relevant (to your target market) informational content to educate, inform and engage your prospects.  And in doing so, you can nurture an online relationship and establish trust and confidence in your brand.  The more relevant the content, the more likely the prospects are to give you their contact information in exchange for the content.  When consumers search online, find you, get informed, share their contact information and buy, it’s called inboundmarketing.

 

Inbound marketing is run as a yearlong campaign consisting of the following elements:

  • Goal Setting, Marketing Strategy & Buyer Persona Development
  • Content Strategy, Sourcing and Development
  • Sales Strategy & Sales Process Automation

Content used in inbound marketing includes blogs, white papers, eBooks, literature, case studies, videos, etc.  According to HubSpot, market leader in inbound marketing automation software, companies who blog get 55% more traffic to their website than those who don’t and companies that promote their blogs get 70% more leads than those who don’t.

Inbound marketing is not just about lead generation and revenue growth.  It’s also about goal setting and continuous improvement of the sales process and marketing optimization.   The speed by which a company wants to achieve their goal drives the inbound marketing budget.  The budget involves license fees for marketing automation software, a monthly retainer fee to the marketing agency executing the inbound marketing campaign, and the cost of developing the content needed to drive traffic to the website enabling engagement with prospects that help meet the sales goals.

Inbound marketing has demonstrated a high degree of success, across many vertical markets when the goals are to increase traffic to the website, lead generation through the company website, and nurture prospects through the sales process online.

According to HubSpot, inbound marketing delivers a lower cost per lead resulting in a higher ROI when compared to traditional outbound advertising (radio, TV, print).

 

Inbound marketing demands a C-level commitment because it requires:

  • A commitment to resource the process.
  • A year-long budgetary commitment in outsourced services and software.
  • A willingness to refine (optimize) or at least modify your existing sales process.
  • A commitment to generate leads and revenue differently than you do today.

While it does require a commitment, inbound marketing can change the way you generate leads and attract customers to your website. Your sales department will receive more warm leads that are already interested in your products and services and customers will feel that your company already knows who they are.  With an investment in an inbound marketing campaign, there is less dependency on traditional cold-call selling.

 All inbound marketing practices can be tracked to the smallest detail and is one of the most important areas in being a successful inbound marketer. There is no more hoping that your advertising might work.  With inbound marketing you, as a marketing manager, know what is effective in attracting new potential clients.

 In the coming weeks we will discuss the different aspects of and the tools of inbound marketing and how it fits within an integrated marketing strategy.  We invite you to follow this series by subscribing to our blog.  It’s what every CEO/CFO and CMO should know about before spending another penny on advertising.

 

 

 

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Topics: Inbound Marketing

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