Being an entrepreneur or a business owner is not an easy task. Wanting to or not, you have to don many hats at once. While you might want to focus on the bigger stuff, the smaller day to day stuff gets eventually ignored. One day ends as a sales executive, while the next day might be something else.
All of it does sound existing, albeit tiring. In an attempt to wear so many hats at once, several essentials get sidelined. Obviously, you do want to increase sales and hence increase the profits. But what about the smaller steps it requires?
One of these smaller steps is inbound marketing. Having a well-structured inbound marketing strategy that actually converts can do wonders for your business. Now to address the elephant in the room, let’s dive into the question that made you click on this page – “How to use inbound marketing to grow my business?”
“It’s no longer about pitching the Today Show. It’s about creating content that will attract the Today Show.”, David Meerman Scott
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is one of the fastest-growing areas of marketing, which essentially means building relationships with your customers for the long run using valuable content.
To give you an example, this blog right here is a method of inbound marketing. While you are interested to learn about inbound marketing, we make sure that you gain that essential value on the topic.
Inbound marketing usually involves the use of blogs, social media, search engine optimisation, e-books, white papers, webinars and more. Moreover, apart from using the correct methods, inbound marketing essentially requires a team and a strategy which puts the methods into the right place.
In today’s technology-driven world, the consumer is smart enough to decide and buy. While outbound marketing might get you enough brand awareness in the outside world, it might not essentially help you convert successfully.
Inbound Marketing: The Process
While inbound marketing might sound like jargon from the big bad corporate world, it isn’t. To keep it simple, it’s just adding values to people’s life by creating meaningful content. Once you achieve that, you have essentially mastered the art of inbound marketing.
So let’s look at that road to mastering the skill of inbound marketing.
1. Create
The first step to inbound marketing is creating. Create a marketing strategy that helps you target, achieve and optimize. The first step of inbound marketing is eventually the most important one.
Based on your goals and targets, come up with content strategies that complement your entire marketing strategy.
2. Optimise
Now since you have been creating content, there’s also a need to optimise the same. Optimising your content basically means to ensure that its seen by the right people who might need your product or services.
For instance, you might be able to promote leather jackets in a tropical country, say the Bahamas, but it won’t essentially sell.
To make sure that your content is actually reaching the right people, there are several tools such as social media marketing, hyperlocal advertising, search engine optimisation and clear call to actions on your content are some of the ways to do so.
3. Analyse, Measure and Improve
After you have done all of it, just make sure that your efforts are generating good numbers.Analysing the numbers, reviewing them, and comparing them with your targets can make a huge difference. If the target has been achieved or the number is larger than what you expected, then the strategy was successfully implemented.
However, if the numbers achieved aren’t what you expected it’s a good time to analyse. This is the step where numbers play a big role.
Use Google Analytics to measure your website’s traffic and all the other details such as the bounce rate, the behaviour of your visitors and what’s the largest source for your website’s traffic.
Understanding the numbers can help you stay ahead of the curve.
Inbound vs Outbound: The Correct Choice
Before you dive into the world of inbound marketing for your business, it is important to understand what are it’s added benefits over outbound marketing.
Outbound marketing has been one of the most widely used practices since the last 6 to 7 decades. It essentially gave the control of the sale into the seller’s hands. Consider these data points about outbound marketing:
- 200 million Americans have registered their phone numbers for the “Do not disturb” call list which essentially blocks the unwanted calls from companies and organisations.
- Inbound marketing practices tend to create 54% more leads than outbound marketing practices.
- 86% of people skip television ads.
Considering the points above, outbound marketing might seem outdated and ineffective. Well, we can’t say that. Since the last 75 years, outbound marketing strategies have boded well for the companies.
However, one thing that is essential to note is the fact that inbound marketing will take over outbound marketing practices. Consider these points:
- Properly executed inbound marketing campaigns tend to give 10x better results than outbound marketing practices.
- 79% of companies, operating a blog, have reported positive ROI for inbound marketing.
- Inbound marketing costs 62 per cent less (per lead) than outbound marketing.
While inbound marketing might be new, one thing that is ascertained as of now is the fact that it is here to stay.
The Flywheel Model: A Catalyst To Inbound Marketing
The Flywheel Model is an inbound marketing strategy, developed by Hubspot, that aims at delivering the best customer experience possible. It was invented by James Watt.
Hubspot explains the Flywheel model is an energy-efficient wheel that is focused around the consumer. The success of this wheel depends on three factors:
- How fast it is spin?
- How big the wheel is?
- Are there any frictions?
Flywheel Model and Inbound Marketing
According to Hubspot, the Flywheel Model and the inbound marketing methodologies are complementary to each other.
The inbound marketing involves three different steps i.e. attract, engage, delight.
- Attract: The attract phase is the one where you tend to invite customers and audience members to your website. The key is to attract prospect consumers with valuable content that helps them gain something without causing any hindrance. Strategies like content marketing, social media marketing, SEO are some of the tools in this phase.
- Engage: This involves making the process of buying from your business easy and simplified. This is the phase which helps generate a long term relationship with your consumer. Strategies like website and mail personalisation, remarketing ads, lead nurturing, multichannel ads are a few of the steps.
- Delight: In this phase, you tend to help the customer and support them. This helps generate a positive outlook of your business in the customer’s mind. Tools like loyalty programs, proactive customer support, after-sales services, customer feedbacks make the customer feel important.
The flywheel model tends to cut down on the friction like lack of communication, poor internal process, misalignment between customers and employees and more. With the flywheel model, the onus of developing an effective customer experience lies in every department and every member of the team.
Conclusion: Inbound Marketing Is The Way To Grow Your Business
“What separates good content from great content is a willingness to take risks and push the envelope.”—Brian Halligan, Co-Founder and CEO of HubSpot
Since many years now, sellers have often tried to take customers for granted. But that has changed now. The leverage has now shifted to the buyer.
With the changing times, the consumer is the one having the power and authority. This new paradigm shift has made companies tilt their marketing strategies too. This new strategy is to make sure that the customer gains as much s(he) can from their business, organisation, or brand.
While inbound marketing might be new, one thing is for sure – it is here to stay.
So are you going to wait for the train to leave the station or hop on and enjoy the rest of the journey? Well, consider us your fellow co-passengers n that amazing journey of yours.
At YouthTarget we understand exactly what works for your business. Keeping your personalised requirements in mind, we curate customised plans that help your business’s inbound marketing strategies. From content marketing to social media management, we provide 360-degree solutions to all your marketing needs.
Don’t wait for the right time.
Book a free consultation today with us and we will help you catapult your business to new heights!
