Inbound Marketing has been a hot topic in the marketing industry for some time now. But what exactly is Inbound Marketing? And how can you use it to improve your marketing strategy and generate qualified prospects for your business?
There’s a lot of noise out there about what Inbound Marketing is, and how it can help to improve your business. But it’s hard to separate fact from fiction, and to know where to begin if you’re stuck in the middle of a creative block. In this blog we look at how you can make the most of bringing inbound marketing tactics into your business, and how it can benefit you.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a practice focused on attracting customers to a business and building relationships. It’s a strategy that leverages the power of digital tools, content, and social media to attract potential customers to your site, blog, or social networks. The end goal of inbound marketing is to make it easy for potential customers in your target markets to find you, engage with you, and be sold to.
Marketing segmentation will work wonders here. Don’t try to be all things to all people; segment your messaging and marketing approach based on the users who get the most out of your product or service. Create specific messaging to answer hesitations or objections proactively. Target users with messaging that answers pain points they experience on a regular basis and prove that you can be a solution to their problems.
Content marketing is a pivotal part of inbound marketing, and content marketing is a way to generate leads and sales by publishing valuable, relevant, and consistent content on your website.
Gated content campaigns, thought leadership webinars and retargeting social media campaigns are all great ways of catering your content and messaging to the audiences you want to attract. Focus on answering pain points that users or potential customers face rather than your product details. Meet them where they are to bridge the gap between their challenges and your product.
Historically, companies and brands would use outbound marketing tactics to reach out to their target demographic; this can take the form of trade shows, event marketing, email blasts, or cold calling. While outbound marketing tactics may get you some visibility or success, it’s far more costly than inbound marketing tactics and more difficult to track from a ROI perspective. When inbound marketing is done right, it should create efficiencies for both your sales and marketing teams and be a more efficient use of your marketing budget.
Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation and Content Marketing Platforms:
Marketing Automation, Content Marketing Software and Inbound Marketing tactics go hand-in-hand. Programs like HubSpot, Marketo or email marketing platforms like MailChimp and Active Campaign have been leading the way in creating more streamlined processes for marketers in the recent past.
With the introduction of artificial intelligence, in the form of content marketing platforms, users are starting to see more ways to streamline their process, augment human creativity and get one step closer to campaign launch. Copysmith does just that.
Our goal is to supplement human creativity with machine learning, not replace it. Get hours of time spent brainstorming or white-boarding back in your day, alleviate writer’s block to prevent lost time and provide better and more enhanced ways of creating content for your brand.
How to Measure Success and Evaluate Return on Investment:
When it comes to measuring success, focus not just on volume of leads or potential customers, but quality of those customers as well. If you’re converting a lot of customers, but seeing lots of churn, your campaign targeting may need to be adjusted.
Measure the potential revenue per lead along with your cost-per-lead (CPL) , or how much marketing cost it took to convert a single customer. This works you in the direction of understanding more in-depth metrics like CAC, or the cost of acquiring a new customer.
Once you establish a baseline for CPL and CAC you can start to measure your marketing activities against it; keep an eye on trends here to understand whether your marketing is continuing to succeed, or whether you may need to make adjustments to your messaging or targeting.
Measure ROI of specific campaigns when it comes to paid advertising; understand how much each prospect and lead cost you to understand whether individual campaigns are successful or not.
All in all, inbound marketing is about attracting prospects to your business rather than you chasing after them. By widening your marketing scope, identifying your key target audiences and taking a broader approach to attracting these individuals to your website, you can make a significant impact on your bottom line.