In the online world there are many tools out there that can help you to grow your business. Some of these inbound marketing tools include landing pages, calls-to-action and lead forms on a website. Others include advertising campaigns such as Google display ads and Facebook ads to drive product-specific, high-intent traffic to your e-commerce portal.
These are all good ways to jumpstart a solid inbound campaign, but the only way in which inbound marketing can fulfill on the promise of unprecedented growth is by understanding the data. And this takes very proactive daily management, testing and measurement of campaigns.
Inbound marketing will not generate positive marketing ROI without proper campaign set up and rigorous procedural testing and content rotation. Here are 5 ideas you need to understand in order for Inbound marketing to be an effective, critical driver for new leads and customers:
Always be selling was a great mantra for 1993, but in 2017, always be helping rings truer. When prospects research a product along their decision journey, those that provide useful, knowledgeable and professional responses will obviously garner the most trust. Particularly for B2B sales, where product sales cycles can be 3 months or longer, inbound marketing allows for an easy and measured way to stay in touch with a prospect throughout the length of the process. Quality inbound content and a well thought out campaign to promote it, allows for an early, critical touch point in the purchasing funnel.
With traditional advertising, each day is a silo. Every call is isolated from every other call, and every technique exists as an independent attempt to get new leads. With inbound marketing techniques, leads can be nurtured over time to continue building trust and respect. Campaigns can be created so your prospects reach a steady flow of new information with each interaction.
While it’s important to create content that is fresh, much of your content will be “evergreen” and will remain indexed in search engines for quite a while, creating a cumulative effect, demonstrating value over time.
A prospect that seeks out what you are selling is always going to have a higher closing percentage than those that you find. It’s called intent. The goal of cold outreach is to create awareness or interest, which was traditionally an important step before intent.
But now, when a customer seeks you out and comes across a helpful piece of content that you created, that interest is already there. A lead created through inbound marketing is 6 times more likely to close than a lead generated through outbound methodologies.
Researching 5 different types of running shoes and comparing the virtues and attributes of each one can happen now in minutes. Not too long ago, customers relied on brand representatives to gain information about a service or product. So, by the time you finally reach your prospects, they likely have a clear idea of what it is they want. Helping them to find this information in the right context, when they possess strong purchase intent, is another reason why inbound marketing is so effective.