Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing
Inbound or outbound – what’s the difference? There are many discussions about this and here’s our take. Outbound marketing is actively promoting and pushing your messages and content to the world. This includes advertising that uses paid digital channels such as display ads, paid social media ads, retargeting, and even traditional paid channels such as TV ads, radio ads, and newspaper blurbs, to engage customers and promote brand awareness.
Inbound marketing works differently – your business creates high-quality content that provides a tangible benefit to potential customers to draw them in to you – and through strategic outreach and SEO, the ones who need your information, products and services come to you. Your job with inbound marketing therefore is to make your content as interesting and as useful as possible, optimize content for search engines, and promote it using free and paid channels so it can be found by the people who are interested in it.
This can be done at a local and global level as long as you are clear about whom you would like to attract and appeal to. As you prepare for inbound marketing in different markets, you’ll have additional variables such as language, culture, and business processes and expectations to consider on top of the recommendations you’ll read about below.
Outbound marketing is often more costly, and there is no guarantee that businesses who invest in it will see a return. Inbound marketing, however, can be much more cost-effective; it takes time and effort to do a great job. You can fill your website with quality helpful content that with a strategic distribution and marketing plan will attract prospective customers who may want the service or product you provide.
Here are some suggestions on how to improve inbound marketing for everyone – from the new startup to the more established business.
Get to Know Your Customers
Survey or Interview Your Customers: Your existing customers are a valuable resource! They can tell you what they like about your product, or what needs work. They can tell you what they like and dislike about your website. They can identify why they needed your product in the first place. You can send a survey to customers via email and even interview some of your best customers individually.
Identify Your Target Customer’s Problem: When you survey your customers, one of your first questions should be, what problem were you trying to solve when you came to us? How did you find us? Dig in a bit to find out what specific problems you were solving for them. For many products or services, the answer is not very clear cut. Having a good idea of what your customer needs when they come to your business will help you build a winning inbound strategy.
Website Insights: Utilize website tracking like Google Analytics and even more specific options like New Relic to track behaviors, and monitor your gated content to learn more about what interests your prospects.
Facebook Insights: Facebook has built some powerful market research tools. You can use these tools to help build a profile of the people who are interested in your company. This, along with the information you were able to gather from your current customers – will help you better understand your audience and identify ideal customer.
Find Your Audience: Once you have surveyed existing customers and looked at the data, you should have a better idea of who your customer is. Use this information to build a profile (or persona) of who this customer is, and what they are looking for. This information will help you to build the rest of your inbound marketing strategy and find like- minded individuals.
Have an Enticing Website
Define Your Brand: If your company were a person, what kind of person would they be? Would they be a helpful aunt or a trusted friend? Perhaps your company is someone youthful who is interested in their appearance, a coach, or a parent worried about their kids? Identifying how your company is seen (and how you want it to be seen) is key. Once you have determined how you want your company to be seen, you can be more intentional about inbound marketing to attract your target audience.
Make Sure Your Site is Mobile Ready: Most people use their phone to access the internet. They may be looking at your site this way- is your site designed to be viewed and used on phones? This is a big part of making your site accessible to customers.
Gated Landing Pages: A landing page is usually focused on promoting specific content. Create landing pages for your gated content. Gated content is where someone has to provide a least an email and perhaps more information about themselves in order to get access. The landing pages you design need to be enticing, easy to understand, and they need to deliver what was promised (a helpful survey, special offer, ebook, video, or blog article the customer was attempting to navigate to).
Smart SEO: SEO is a multi-phased and long-term process of optimizing your website and online presence to improve your organic search engine results. Optimizing your website and landing pages for SEO brings people to your site. There are a lot of things that can improve your search results, including focusing on a couple of relevant keywords per web page and creating relevant content.
Quality Backlinks: SEO also includes getting quality backlinks. Search engines pay attention to which sites link back to yours, it’s a sort of proof of quality content. The more reputable sites that link back to your site, the more legitimate your site appears to search engines. Some people attempt to manufacture these backlinks themselves, but search engines tend to filter out inorganic results. So focus on getting your site reviewed and linked by legitimate websites.
Create Quality Content
Tell Engaging Stories: Ultimately, your content should tell a story that holds the interest of the potential customer. If they aren’t interested in how you are saying something, they won’t stick around to learn more. One way to grab the customer’s attention is to tell your story well, in copy and design.
Great Headlines: Great headlines catch a reader’s eye. If your headline is interesting, a potential customer may stay on your site longer to read it, in addition to whatever brought them there in the first place. Make your headlines engaging and helpful – but don’t create click bait, or fake headlines just to get them to click on your article! Think of your headlines as waving flags- they should indicate what is inside the rest of the article in a way that will grab attention.
Long, Data Driven Articles: Tell the entire story: long form content is actually a great way to really dig into a subject. If you’ve got a big story to tell, it’s ok for your articles to be longer, even up to a few thousand words, especially if it’s supported by vetted data. Not only is this good for SEO, it is great for your audience. Write articles that you would want to read- find a hook that makes even the mundane interesting!
Place Many Forms of Media in Your Content: Use different types of media to capture attention and engage- people learn differently! If you write a blog article, add an image. If you record a podcast, add a blurb at the bottom that explains it, or include a transcription of the podcast. The more forms of media you can combine, the more visually and mentally stimulating it will be for your site visitors. You want your company’s content to be memorable.
Have Guest Writers Contribute To Your Blog: Bringing in other experts who can share helpful content to your blog can be a great way to cross-promote and make your site more reputable. Find non-competing businesses and their owners who might be able to contribute to your blog (or podcast, for that matter). Offer to do the same for them, and to promote their website on your blog. Both businesses can prosper from the partnership.
Host a Webinar: Put your expertise out there and host a webinar. Check that all of the required technical aspects are in place before. It really helps to do several test webinars to check internally if everything works from end to end. Make sure you plan what you will say and practice extensively so everything runs smoothly. Be prepared to fill any dead air that might occur and prepare your own questions and answers for the Q&A section. Sometimes it helps to break the ice with a well-paced question to get things going. Promote extensively on your social media, website, and via email.
Optimize Social Media And Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing: Optimize the magnifiers. Build relationships with influencers who work within your market. For example, if you sold wine you might look for someone on Twitter who reviews wines or does instructional videos on how to pick the best wines. Influencers can really help get the word out, especially if they believe in your product or service! They will discuss it, and link to it, and generally get other people interested in what you offer.
Remember that they are most likely running a business themselves, so make sure it is a reciprocal relationship: what can you offer them in return? Can you help promote them? It’s not uncommon for some influencers to expect payment, you’ll need to decide if that approach works for you. You’ll also want to be transparent about a paid relationship with your audiences.
Ask (or Answer) Questions: Do your customers ask one particular question a lot? Do you want to explain a common misconception about your product? Social media is a great place to reach your customers and have a discussion. Encourage them to engage in the discussion. Use it wisely, and direct the conversation on topics that can lead the customer back to your site. Link to relevant parts of your site in the answer.
Offer Things That Are Helpful
Free Guides: What does your company do best? Is it something that can be made into a free guide? For example, If your software solves a list of issues for a target group, you can share best practices that lead back to your solution. When the customer enters their email address to receive the guide, you have acquired a lead and an opportunity to follow up with them as well.
Online Training: Is there something you can teach your potential customers or current customers? Why not teach it to them via online training? This gives you a great chance to build rapport with clients, provide quality information that showcases your expertise, and an opportunity to tactfully promote your products or services. Make sure that the information you’re giving them is worth their time. It is important to ask yourself: would I be interested in my course if I wasn’t teaching it?
There are many other inbound marketing ideas out there to attract prospects, and hopefully these have been helpful to spark some ideas.
Want some help executing your inbound marketing strategy locally and globally? Contact us for a free consultation and learn more about how we can help your business reach its full potential.
