If you’re looking to grow your business, you don’t need a website designer, an “SEO guy”, a copywriter, and a consulting agency…you need someone that understands all of these disciplines. Internet marketing is not about having a pretty website, it’s about generating a lot of traffic and converting that traffic into a lot of leads.
Think of your sales and marketing process as a funnel. Fresh prospects come in at the top of the funnel, happy customers go out the bottom. As a company, your goal is to maximize both the number of people you attract at the top of your funnel as website visitors and the number that come out the bottom as customers.
We use three types of tactics to do this:
Get Found Online
Tactics like blogging and search engine optimization that aim to attract quality prospects to your website.
Convert Visitors Into Leads
Tactics like landing pages and lead nurturing that aim to convert website visitors to leads and long-term customers.
Analyze
Tactics that aim to improve the efficiency of the entire process — to get more of the right prospects into the top of your sales funnel more happy customers at the end of their first experience with you.
Inbound marketing is most effective marketing method used to generate leads and customers. By attracting visitors naturally through search engines, blog articles, and social media, inbound marketing allows you to appeal to tons of potential customers.
To convert that traffic into leads, attractive offers are created that engage your audience. Marketing tools such as landing pages and calls to action are used to generate a lead’s information. Once leads are generated, inbound marketing techniques such as email marketing and lead nurturing are put into practice. When your prospect is ready to buy, you’re at the top of their list.
Tools such as lead intelligence and advanced marketing analytics provide you with all of the tools you need to close more sale and grow your business.
Inbound Marketing Breaks Down Into 3 Phases.
Get Found Convert Analyze
Get Found Online
Search Engine Optimization
Content Marketing & Blogging
Local Maps Search Engine Optimization
Social Media Marketing
Authority Building (Link Building, but smarter)
Convert Website Visitors Into Leads
Responsive & Mobile Web Design
Development Of Value-Based Offers
Landing Pages and Forms That Convert
Call To Action Buttons
Lead Nurturing & Email Marketing
Analyze
Website Visitors
Leads
Customers
Conversion Rates
Benchmarks
Content Performance
Keyword Rankings
Competitor Monitoring
All Website Analytics Are Available 24/7
Inbound marketing is marketing that’s useful. It means acquiring customers by attracting and nurturing prospects with exceptional content, data and customer service, not interrupting them with spam. It means pulling prospects in with a magnet, not beating them over the head with a sledgehammer.
Inbound marketing tactics tend to be cheaper than traditional marketing tactics. Companies that focus on inbound tactics have a 62% lower cost-per-lead than companies that focus on outbound tactics.
Win The Zero Moment Of Truth
The sales funnel starts much earlier than it did a few years ago. Customers start researching information about their planned purchase earlier than ever. You need to be there to build trust and become a part of the conversation at the beginning…the Zero Moment Of Truth or “ZMOT”. (zee-mot)
What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound Marketing is a permission based methodology that focuses on driving relevant traffic to your website, converting that traffic to leads, and finally, turning those leads into sales. Relevant traffic is driven to your website through attractive blog articles, social media, and effective search engine optimization techniques. This method of attracting qualified traffic is much more effective than the alternative – blasting a message to thousands of uninterested people in the hopes you’ll have a return rate of around 2%.
Once qualified visitors are on your website, the inbound marketing methodology drives visitors to attractive offers such as premium videos and ebooks. In exchange for these offers, website visitors will provide their contact information. This method of sharing offers is much more effective at generating leads and filling your sales pipeline than the traditional “contact us” link on the navigation bar.
The obvious next step of the sales process would be to turn leads into sales. The inbound marketing methodology utilizes marketing automation to collect social media information about your leads, segment them into targeted leads, and manage the initial follow-up for you. Tools like lead nurturing and e-mail marketing could help close up to 50% more leads.
Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing generally consists of marketing methods such as trade shows, email blasts to purchased lists, internal cold calling, outsourced telemarketing, and advertising. In a time not so long ago, this was the standard and a very effective method of getting your message out there.
Then times changed – People were no longer using the yellow pages and unwanted marketing messages were easily blocked out by caller ID’s, DVR’s and spam filters. Not to mention the fact that everyone is too busy to meet with your door to door salesperson or attend a trade show. Time’s have changed but the demand for your product or service hasn’t. Are you marketing to those who actually want your product?
Why should you invest in Inbound Marketing?
- Inbound marketing channels are maintaining their low-cost advantage: Inbound marketing-dominated organizations experience a cost per lead 62% lower than outbound marketing-dominated organizations.
- The gap between spending on inbound vs. outbound continues to widen: In 2009, inbound marketing had a 9% greater share of the lead generation budget; in 2011 its share was 17% greater.
- Blogs and social media channels are generating real customers: 57% of companies using blogs reported that they acquired customers from leads generated directly from their blog.
- More and more business are blogging: Businesses are now in the minority if they do not blog. From 2009 to 2011 the percentage of businesses with a blog grew from 48% to 65%.
- Businesses are increasingly aware their blog is highly valuable: 85% of businesses rated their company blogs as “useful,” “important” or “critical;” a whopping 27% rated their company blog as “critical” to their business.
