Inbound

Taking Your Marketing to a New Level

Inbound Marketing is the new way to market businesses online and can be considered the new SEO. We use content marketing and lead nurturing strategies to take prospects through a powerful and educating sales funnel faster than we ever could before.

The Inbound Methodology

In the past we used to buy ads and email lists and hoping they will work to drive new customers. Now people are taking a different approch to how they buy and Inbound Marketing is about being there to answer your ideal customer’s questions using your blog and social media platforms. Using call-to-action buttons and landing pages we are able to provide more value and generate qualified leads who eventually become delighted customers.

The graphic represents the four actions in any inbound marketing campaign. Attract strangers, convert visitors, close leads, delight customers who promote you.

In the past we used to buy ads and email lists and hoping they will work to drive new customers. Now people are taking a different approch to how they buy and Inbound Marketing is about being there to answer your ideal customer’s questions using your blog and social media platforms. Using call-to-action buttons and landing pages we are able to provide more value and generate qualified leads who eventually become delighted customers. The graphic represents the four actions in any inbound marketing campaign. Attract strangers, convert visitors, close leads, delight customers who promote you.

Share it where and when they want it.

Content people care about is the content they will share. With all of the new technology like mobile devices everyone wants instant information. Provide them with the information they want, where they want it and when they need it the most.

When you can be there answering their questions when and where your ideal customers are looking, you will be an instant authority and resource. This becomes marketing people love.

Major Themes:

• Content Creation– You create targeted content that answers your customer’s basic questions and needs, and you share that content far and wide.
• Lifecycle Marketing– You recognize that people go through stages as they interact with your company, and that each stage requires different marketing actions.
• Personalization– As you learn more about your leads over time, you can better personalize your messages to their specific needs.
• Multi-channel– Inbound marketing is multi-channel by nature because it approaches people where they are, in the channel where they want to interact with you.
• Integration– Your publishing and analytics tools all work together like a well-oiled machine, allowing you to focus on publishing the right content in the right place at the right time.

Four Marketing Actions

Attract prospects through:

• Blogging – Inbound marketing starts with blogging. A blog is the single best way to attract new visitors to your website. In order to get found by the right prospective customers, you must create educational content that speaks to them and answers their questions.
• Social Media – You must share remarkable content and valuable information on the social web, engage with your prospects, and put a human face on your brand. Interact on the networks where your ideal buyers spend their time.
• SEO – our customers begin their buying process online, usually by using a search engine to find something they have questions about. So you need to make sure you’re appearing prominently when they search. To get there, you need to carefully, analytically pick keywords, optimize your pages, create content, and build links around the terms your ideal buyers are searching for.
• Pages – You must optimize your website to appeal to and speak with your ideal buyers. Transform your website into a beacon of helpful content to entice the right strangers to visit your pages.

Some of the most important tools in converting visitors to leads include:

• Calls-to-Action – Calls-to-action are buttons or links that encourage your visitors to take action, like “Download a Whitepaper” or “Attend a Webinar.” If you don’t have enough calls-to-action or your calls-to-action aren’t enticing enough, you won’t generate any leads.
• Landing Pages – When a website visitor clicks on a call-to-action, they should then be sent to a landing page. A landing page is where the offer in the call-to-action is fulfilled, and where the prospect submits information that your sales team can use to begin a conversation with them. When website visitors fill out forms on landing pages, they typically become leads.
• Forms – In order for visitors to become leads, they must fill out a form and submit their information. Optimize your form to make this step of the conversion process as easy as possible.
• Contacts – Keep track of the leads you’re converting in a centralized marketing database. Having all your data in one place helps you make sense out of every interaction you’ve had with your contacts — be it through email, a landing page, social media, or otherwise — and how to optimize your future interactions to more effectively attract, convert, close, and delight your buyer personas.

Closing tools include:

• Lead Scoring – You’ve got contacts in your system, but how do you know which ones are ready to speak to your sales team? Using a numerical representation of the sales-readiness of a lead takes the guesswork out of the process.
• Email – What do you do if a visitor clicks on your call to action, fills out a landing page, or downloads your whitepaper, but still isn’t ready to become a customer? A series of emails focused on useful, relevant content can build trust with a prospect and help them become more ready to buy.
• Marketing Automation – This process involves creating email marketing and lead nurturing tailored to the needs and lifecycle stage of each lead. For example, if a visitor downloaded a whitepaper on a certain topic from you in the past, you might want to send that lead a series of related emails. But if they follow you on Twitter and visited certain pages on your website, you might want to change the messaging to reflect those different interests.
• Closed-loop Reporting – How do you know which marketing efforts are bringing in the best leads? Is your sales team effectively closing those best leads into customers? Integration with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system allows you to analyze just how well your marketing and sales teams are playing together.

Tools used to delight customers include:

• Smart Calls-to-Action – These present different users with offers that change based on buyer persona and lifecycle stage.
• Social Media – Using various social platforms gives you the opportunity to provide real-time customer service.
• Email and Marketing Automation – Providing your existing customers with remarkable content can help them achieve their own goals, as well as introduce new products and features that might be of interest to them.