Inbound marketing is one of those
marketing strategies that sounds complex, but when you get to the root of it,
chances are - you're already doing it in some way, shape or form.
I know we love to bang on about how much
planning marketing takes, but we only say it so much because it's true.
And nowhere is it truer than for an inbound marketing campaign.
Just because you're probably already doing some kind of inbound marketing doesn't mean
that your job is completely done and dusted.
So to help you out,
let's have a look into the fundamentals
of inbound marketing and how you can apply it to each stage of the buying funnel.
Hey, guys, it's Liv here
from Neighbourhood, where we help brands find, sell and keep their people.
So what is inbound marketing?
And the marketing is pretty simply the method of attracting customers,
clients, prospects, or whoever else is paying for the things
that your business does. Through Inbound marketing,
your goal is to build relationships
and connections with the people you want to buy your product or service.
But while traditional marketing may have told you otherwise,
it's not just about getting your target audience to empty their wallet.
That method of marketing is far too shallow for 2021 and the age
of humanising your strategy with buyer personas and your audience in mind.
It's about helping people with their
problems and empowering them to reach their goals.
Of course, you want them to do that with your products and services, too.
I mean, you've got to put dinner on the table at the end of the day, right?
The thing is that it's not just enough
to attract customers to your business with your marketing efforts.
You've also got to keep them there.
That's why inbound marketing typically covers
the following three areas, 1: attracting, helping your people find your business
through creating valuable content and making you sound like a trusted source
that helps with various types of content. 2: engaging, creating valuable content
with insights and solutions that address what customers are struggling with -
making you sound so clever that they
actively want to engage with your resources and guides. And thirdly: delighting,
always offering help and support so customers feel empowered by their purchase,
find success and turn back to you for help when they need it.
So next up, what's the flywheel?
The flywheel is a term coined by our friends at HubSpot,
and it demonstrates how you can turn strangers into promoters through
the inbound methodology and how this method can easily accelerate your ROI and rate
of qualified leads entering your sales funnel.
The idea is that as you move
from attracting to engaging and delighting, you're building momentum
that makes the flywheel turn.
And as the flywheel spins, it turns strangers into leads,
leads into customers and at the end, those customers into promoters.
Now for the sciencey it, see for things to keep spinning.
The amount of energy needs to be greater than the resistance pushing against it.
It's simple physics, but in marketing,
you're always going to meet resistance, particularly at the start of the process.
When your flywheel starts out spinning, it's going to be pretty slow.
So it's easy to slow down
with that resistance. When your flywheel gains traction,
well, that's where the fun begins, because now that resistance that threatened
to slow or stop everything in the beginning doesn't affect you anymore.
Instead of having to consistently fund attraction strategies,
you're now in a position where your promoters bring in new people for you.
With all of that being said, you still need to find your people first.
Thankfully, there's never been more
support to help you answer search queries and bump up your search rankings.
Content marketing is awesome as an inbound
marketing methodology, particularly in the attracting phase.
By using a combination of social media
marketing, SEO and super helpful content, you can start showing your customers how
valuable you and your products are to encourage all important conversions.
You've probably thought about content marketing and how it fits with the buyers journey. And
honestly inbound marketing isn't too dissimilar.
There are indeed a ton of parallels
between attracting strategies and the awareness stage,
in that both aim to woo customers towards your products by showing how useful they
are. With the aim here being making your content easily findable and accessible,
strategies like SEO content and social media marketing a great ways to attract
your people and begin explaining why you're the perfect solution for them.
So now that you've found your people, it's time to work on selling to them.
But more than that, you want to make sure
that they're engaging with what you do and actively making the decision to pursue
a long term relationship with your business.
This is where your inbound marketing
methodology will begin to depend a lot more on your specific business and how you
go about marketing and selling to potential buyers.
eCommerce businesses, for example,
might use engaging strategies like building specific email campaigns
to market certain solutions to certain customer profiles.
Or on the other hand, if you have sales reps that handle calls
from interested prospects, engaging strategies could include things
like having a strategy for calling back leads to create more opportunities
and spending more time talking about customer issues
than the actual product that you're selling. With engaging strategies,
it's vital to remember to sell a solution, not a product.
After all, it really doesn't matter if you
have the best products around, if your customers don't think they have
any need for them, and if they don't have any need for them, then attempting to sell
them regardless comes across as cheap and somewhat scammy. In short,
inbound leads need to feel like they're
entering a mutually beneficial arrangement.
They get a product or service that they
need to fix a problem they have and you get paid win win!
If you enjoy this video, be sure to subscribe and leave the like.
And if you're on Youtube, make sure you hit that bell so you can stay up to date
on all of our latest videos delivered every week to your inbox.
The biggest mistake that we see a ton of business is making with their inbound
marketing plan is failing to follow up with customers once they've made
a purchase. Inbound marketing can't exactly be a three step process if you fail
to recognise the third step. Delighting is more than just closing deals.
It's all about making sure the customer is
happy with what they've bought and has a line of
communication with you, if they need any more guidance or help.
It's arguably the stage that provides the biggest impact.
Trust me, it makes the biggest difference between a customer that's a one hit wonder
and a customer that becomes your biggest cheerleader.
Email surveys and using chatbots are
a great way to make sure your customers happy with that purchase.
Plus, social media is a great opportunity to offer support,
particularly as it's an easy channel for customers to communicate through.
By responding to reviews and publicly
answering questions customers ask on your page.
You're not just making sure every customers happy with their experience
and improving customer retention, but also showing potential customers
the benefits of working with you, vastly improving their own expectations.
So are you curious about Inbound marketing?
Well, at Neighbourhood, we love it not only for conversions
and customer acquisition, but as an overarching business methodology.
So if you're curious to hear more about
what we've just talked about, just reach out! And that's it!
If you find this video helpful, then feel free to share it with someone
that you know that needs a hand with inbound marketing.
You could also subscribe to our blog, where
you'll find a bunch more tools, tips and templates to Help you Find Sell &
Keep your people, just like Neighbourhood does.
Well, that's it for me for now. Happy marketing.