Don’t Find Customers. Be Found !!
How would it feel if customers come flocking to you instead of you interrupting them with unsolicited promotions and advertisements?
You may think. Is it Even Possible? Yes. It’s possible.
You can attract customers to automatically come to you when it’s time for them to buy. This is known as Inbound Marketing.
Inbound marketing is a strategy that focuses on drawing in potential customers and visitors to your website or social media page instead of you interrupting them with unsolicited promotions and advertisements
Many brands have understood the power of Inbound Marketing and are embracing it in a big way.
They are spending 90% of their marketing money on inbound marketing and only 10% of it on outbound marketing.
Let’s face it. Reaching out to your customers with mass marketing techniques is no longer effective.
No one likes commercials popping up in the middle of their Facebook or Instagram feed.
No one likes waking up to an inbox full of salesy emails from brands especially if they have not subscribed to it.
Customers now decide for themselves what to buy, who to buy from, and most importantly when to buy.
You can no longer influence them to buy at your convenience.
Rather, you need to be available to them when they are ready to buy.
So, how do I know when my customer is going to buy?
How do I attract them so that they come to me?
Simple!!!
Instead of shoving your product or service in your customers’ faces, you focus on creating valuable content that answers their questions and solves their problems.
Whenever they are searching for solutions they find you and reach you.
Such leads are the most promising and have a very high chance of converting.
84% of consumers will buy from a brand they found or follow over a competitor.
How does Inbound Marketing work?
As you may have understood by now that Inbound marketing is pull marketing where you get prospects to find you.
It utilizes many forms of Digital Marketing – Content Marketing, Blogs, SEO, Social Media, Email automation, and online events in an integrated manner to create brand awareness and offer solutions.
In contrast to outbound marketing, where you attempt to find customers via exhibitions, trade shows, print, or online advertisements, inbound marketing earns the attention of customers whenever they are ready to buy.
In short, Customers find you, you don’t find them.
Inbound Marketing is replacing outdated “renting attention” tactics or Advertisements.
It is geared such that prospects find your company in the early stages of their decision-making process. This leads to a stronger influence on their future buying decisions.
Inbound marketing has numerous benefits when utilized effectively.
It helps to:
- Shape a preference and influence future purchases of your customers.
- Increase your Personal or Company brand awareness.
- Enable customers to engage with your brand at their point of need, 24/7.
- Generate qualified leads for less money (when compared with traditional marketing).
- Generate social media shares and inbound links.
- Put customers as the decision-maker leading to faster conversions.
What makes for a successful Inbound Digital Marketing Campaign?
A successful inbound marketing campaign incorporates all or parts of the following elements:
- Defining your Target audience: Identify your target audience and learn all you can about them. Click here to know more.
- Building a High Traffic Website or blog with useful content. Find what makes your audience tick and write content for your customers. Text, Videos, whitepapers, eBooks, e-newsletters, Testimonials, Case Studies… Any opportunity to share valuable content is an opportunity to drive traffic to your website or Blog. Make sure your content is seen by the right audience so that it brings in the right leads. Click here to know more.
- Search Engine Optimization: SEO ensures your content is structured effectively for search engines like Google so that they recognize it. Using effective keyword analysis, well-structured site design, and other SEO “best practices” will launch your site to the top of search results. SEO will ensure that your user-friendly content is ranked higher by Google. Click here to Know More.
- Social Media: 67% of online adults are using social media to share information. Use the widely popular online communities such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin effectively to share your content. Don’t irritate them with Sales Ads.
- Email Automation: Email Marketing automation empowers you with tools and strategies to convert leads, fans, and followers to customers. You can accomplish this by cultivating relationships with leads that are not yet ready to buy (most often via targeted email campaigns). Email Automation also enhances your inbound efforts by helping you separate good leads from not-so-good ones.
- Online Events and Webinars: You can take inbound marketing to the next level with online webinars and live events.
To be successful in inbound marketing, you need to introduce a disciplined approach to content creation, introduce marketing automation tools that help you to nurture and score leads. You need to optimize how these leads flow through the sales pipeline.
Why Inbound Marketing should be your preferred strategy?
Buyers today are more empowered due to easy online access. The internet provides them with instant information and the gratification of finding what they searched for.
They have access to detailed specs, pricing, and reviews about goods and services 24/7 in a few clicks. Smartphones have added a wherever/whenever dimension to every aspect of their search experience.
Not only are they finding but also sharing on Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms. This builds immense trust, reputation, and authority in whatever niche you are practicing your business.
How to Quantify Your Inbound Marketing Success?
When measuring the success of your inbound marketing efforts, there are a few metrics to choose from.
You can look at your SEO rankings, inbound links, or the number of articles published to derive insights into how your campaigns are performing.
Having 5,000 followers on Facebook or Instagram might sound impressive, but this number is useless if you don’t get real business results.
Instead, you should be looking at metrics that show how Inbound marketing helped your company generate more leads and faster growth against your competitors.
One of the valuable metrics is organic traffic.
It tells you how many people find your website by means of a search engine rather than typing in your URL or searching for your brand name.
If your website or blog pops up high in the search results, then you’ve benefited from a successful inbound marketing strategy.
Tracking how much of this organic traffic converted into inbound leads will give you an idea of how you might need to adjust your marketing strategies.
You can also check how quickly your online presence graph is improving using analytics.
Conclusion: Make Inbound Digital Marketing Work For Your Brand!
In today’s online world, the Internet and social media are shaping our daily decisions. Customers are more educated as they are exposed to more information than ever. This phenomenon is causing a change in buying behaviors. As a result, all businesses have to adjust and respond to this shift.
Outbound marketing efforts alone are no longer enough to produce leads. If you need to attract customers and not chase them down you need to invest in inbound marketing.
When it comes to inbound marketing, the more you invest, the greater your return.!
To be successful in inbound marketing, businesses need to fix an annual marketing budget and execute it in a sustained manner over a longer period rather than doing sporadic acts of marketing activity which usually is a waste of time and money.
