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Now that you are beginning to understand the type of systems and content to place on your website, it is time to explain the processes of guiding your prospective customers down the sales funnel.  Certain types and styles of content posts are meant to attract, others are meant to covert and, even others are created to give the prospect a final push and close the sale.  The process is to slowly influence a potential customer of yours with content posts as they proceed to move down the funnel. This is not an exact science.  When a potential buyer is already moving through the funnel, one untimely content post can cause them to climb back up and you can lose out on the opportunity to bring them “IN”. You must bring the customer “IN” and through the sales funnel to be successful at inbound marketing. The purpose is to guide your potential customers through the buyer’s process with your content.

 Inbound marketing as a process is not just about drawing traffic to your website.  It is also about managing the experience of the visitor to the website when they arrive.  So the goal is not only to put keyword specific content on the website to help you get found, but to also provide content that is interesting or engaging to the visitor and guiding them through the buying process throughout the sales cycle.  Inbound marketing protocol is to segment content for visitors that are at the top of the funnel, middle of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel.

Top of the funnel

     Content and the overall importance of remarkable content in the inbound marketing strategy has been a topic of emphasis throughout our blogs.  There are specific techniques to use while posting content to leverage web visitors to leads.  The main idea is to capture information about a web visitor to convert them into a lead for your business.  The correct placement of an irresistible offer on a content post should convince or persuade a web visitor to offer something back to you, their contact information.  Receiving just one simple piece of information such as a company name, email or website of a single web visitor can be powerful enough to convert this visitor into multiple sales. What can you offer? Content created to tailor to your perfect customer is what you will offer.  However, content can exist in multiple forms in the inbound marketing world.  There is a process of how, when, what and where to place your content and couple it with an irresistible offer to attract the most customer views and receive the most customer information.    

     Today we will break down one of the most important inbound marketing strategies of them all, attracting, converting and closing the customer.  There is a famous quote by Alec Baldwin in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, “ABC, Always be closing!”  While closing does lead to sales and is the ultimate goal in business to consumer and business to business marketing plans, inbound marketing takes somewhat of a different approach than the “Always be closing” or, every sales manager’s favorite term the “One Call Close.” 

     The Inbound sales process is Buyer Centric.  Attract your ideal customer with content, listen to what the potential buyer has to say about your content, and leverage the buyer’s thoughts into a sale.  Transformation of the sales process in the inbound marketing strategy is essential to getting the customers to become leads and the leads to become sales.  You must transform the way accounts are targeted,researched and prospected.  There is an extensive amount of resources in an inbound marketing sales system than in a traditional “Always Be Closing” approach. In the inbound marketing process, a sales person will know more about their leads before ever talking to them in person.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to website strategies to better the position of a website in search results for a certain word or phrase.  This is the process of improving a websites appearance on a natural or un-paid search engine results page like Google, Yahoo, or Bing. SEO strategies determine how your website, compared to your competition, is placed organically on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

     A content marketing strategy is the process of getting potential customers informed about your businesses products or service by having remarkable content.  Now, the time has come to inform you about the ways in which inbound marketing channels and systems all work together to guide potential customers down the sales funnel.  The key to a successful inbound marketing campaign is understanding in what Search Engines are looking for when finding or “Crawling” your website and, then, how search engines determine where to place your website on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Content, keywords, tags, page names, page titles, meta descriptions and so much more can have a large effect on how your website is performing in attracting the right customers and whether or not you make the first page of a SERP. Don’t worry, it is OK if you do not understand all the internet vocabulary. We at The Marketing Department- Malvern are here to help. 

     If there is one thing to take away from reading our blogs, know this, content is the basis of everything. Content is the message. Content is your message.  Take a step back and think, without content the internet would be nothing, just a vast area of space.  Search results equal content but, what do you put in your content? That is where The Marketing Department- Malvern comes in.

Did you know that 80% of business decision-makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement?  Also, research conducted over the past four years shows that because of the way people shop or research purchases today through the internet, 60% of the sales cycle is already over before a prospect ever talks to a sales person.

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.