A Solid Inbound Marketing Strategy Can Help You Soar! [Infographic]
Do You Lack an Inbound Marketing Strategy?
You started your business a few years ago. Everything is working well enough, but you have visions of a future with more customers and more wiggle room to invest in your business. You have enough customers to keep the lights on, but you want to grow. You can't seem to get your competitor's number and quality of customers. Not only that, it seems every time you think you have a lead, they get picked off by your competitor.
You send out flyers, advertise in local media, and attend trade shows and networking events, but your efforts provide a small return. Your competitor seems to be a household name and you are lucky if anyone has heard of your company. Things could be better.
You have heard of inbound marketing but are unsure how it applies to you. How will it help you get good quality leads and customers enticed by your service? Wouldn't it be nice to give your competitors a run for their money?
What You Need to Know About Inbound Marketing
Push vs Pull
The easiest way to understand Inbound Marketing is to describe the “push vs. pull” marketing method. “Pushing” would be any marketing effort where you push your services, product, and advertising in front of people without them wanting or looking for it. Classic examples of this are TV ads, newspaper ads, and flyers. You may get some customers interested in what you are selling, but it is a matter of getting the word out to the biggest audience (which is very costly) to increase your odds of getting potential customers.
“Pulling” would be marketing where you have an understanding of what your target customer wants and you publish content (blogs, ebooks, videos, classes) that will help them. You will show your value to them and they will want to pursue you as a possible solution to their problem. It is about bringing customers to you by adding value. Your content would be specific to your target customer; therefore, you would know that any leads that were generated would give you a greater chance of a sale (and being aligned with your mission).
A good example of inbound marketing would be a company that sells household repair services. The company might have a blog where they regularly publish useful and relevant articles related to what their potential customers want (i.e. when repairs are needed for certain items in a house). People interested in this would find the company's blog (using Google Search or other blogs) and then see the service/product the company provides. They may choose to purchase additional useful services or products that the company has for sale or make a mental note of the company for a future service or product.
This is a very simplified example. You may have many questions like:
How do people find me on the internet? SEO
How do I capture the leads when people visit my site? Landing Page
What do I put on my website that interests my potential customers? Content Marketing
How do I contact those interested in my product or service? Email Marketing
How do I get my face in front of people that may be interested? Social Media Marketing
How do I position my company so as to stand out from my competitors? Branding
The short answers are in Bold. Inbound marketing is not hard to understand, but as you can see there are many pieces that need to come together.
Hubspot offers a great free class on inbound marketing and you can get an official certification.
Additionally, I provide some invaluable tools in my blogs for the various pieces of inbound marketing like Email Marketing, Content Marketing, and Landing Pages.
You can take your first step by grabbing the domain you want and signing up for a reliable hosting plan.
In case you don't realize how a solid inbound marketing strategy can help you, here are a few statistics in an infographic from Invesp Consulting that should open your eyes:
Infographic by- Invesp Conversion Optimization Services
With these tools, you now have a good start in developing your inbound marketing strategy. That being said, things continuously change so keep your eye out for current trends. Tenfold wrote this great article Inbound Marketing in 2017 - 5 Trends to Keep Your Eyes On. It will help you see what things are "in" this year.
The important takeaway from this, inbound marketing and its individual components provide a significantly higher ROI than traditional outbound marketing. Today, it is so easy for anyone to get free information. Inbound marketing is a great way to show value to your targeted customers. Show them that they need you and that you are invaluable!