We are all familiar with traditional marketing techniques and a lot of business owners are still using these methods that involve out bound marketing to potential customers using tools like advertising in local newspapers, community flyers, telephone directories or even posters and billboards which are in themselves difficult to measure the effectiveness and track their performance in terms of delivering customers. Indeed it is often the case that the potential customer is either not ready to buy your product or is not even interested when they see your message that is advertising your product to the masses.
It would then seem that this type of marketing is not very effective in targeting customers who should be buying your products, it’s a bit like a duck shoot or a shot in the dark!
How to develop really effective inbound marketing strategy
Inbound marketing starts to focus on targeted techniques such as, content creation, social media and search marketing to help potential customers find your business when they are interested in buying your products. This brings more qualified quality customers into your sales funnel.
Step 1
Getting more qualified customers to your website is the goal and the method to achieve this is by creating content that meets the needs of those customers. This process is sometimes called ‘content marketing’ and relies on having content that answers questions and provides real value. Visitors will be able to find the content through searching and landing on the associated page and begin to realise that your pages provide a reason to hang around and read more about what you are offering. There might also be links to a blog, white papers, case studies or even a video or two.
Step 2
Getting found by customers who need your products using advanced search-marketing techniques and optimised web page content will ensure that your content is found by visitors who are looking for the answers and solutions that you are providing. Sharing content through blog posts, guest blogging, and through social media posts are other methods for proliferating your content to potential visitors to your website.
Step 3
Getting customers to interact with you is paramount in developing the relationship and allowing them to learn more about you. Providing a series of suitable ‘call to action’ triggers enables you to direct them to what they are looking for on other pages within your website. You may also want to capture their contact details so that you can provide them with more targeted information and continue to build the relationship with email marketing until they are ready to buy from you.
Step 4
Increased traffic and converting leads into customers is the goal by this stage of the process. You have tailored landing pages and information pages to meet the needs of the visitors and now you want to convert them into customers. Now is the time to make the contacts more personal with direct one to one emails, phone calls and online meetings.
Step 5
The final step in the inbound marketing process is to measure the results that you have achieved, fine tune the various steps of the process and make any adjustments as required to continue to fill the ‘funnel’ and build the number of prospects that will eventually become customers.
Inbound marketing like any other relationship building strategy is an on-going process that takes time and requires consistent and constant care to nurture and keep your business growing in the right direction – onwards and upwards.
Peter Bowen
Managing Director
First One On Limited