Inbound Marketing
Many clients come to us to improve their sales by harnessing the power of the Internet. Inbound Marketing has replaced Outbound (Advertising) as a powerful sales tool. Imagine if you could get customers knocking on YOUR door because they want to!
A little history
Search engines were created to sort through the astounding amount of information that was amassing on the web. Their driving mission has always been to deliver the most accurate search results for the search terms (or keywords and phrases) entered. But since the first email was sent by Ray Tomlinson in 1971, a lot has changed.
How does a web page get to page 1?
Returning the most relevant result to a search query sounds simple. But with billions of web pages now indexed, how do the search engines determine what goes on page 1? SEO gurus have made an industry out of answering that question. Of course, the complex algorithms shift and change to weed out black hat tricksters who know how to game the system. Keeping up with the rules isn’t easy. Learn more about SEO
One thing hasn’t changed.
Well-written content that is useful to those looking for answers, information, a product or solving a problem gets priority. The back end technical part of SEO helps search engines index your pages more easily, but the quality and quantity of your pages counts enormously. Read more about how SEO works
That’s why blogging has taken off in recent years. Every page you add to your website is an opportunity to be indexed for keywords. With readership and social sharing, your authority increases. This is where Inbound Marketing comes in.
Why is it called “Inbound?”
This new kind of online marketing gets customers to come to YOU. Advertising is “Outbound” marketing. It pushes ads AT you when you are looking at or for something else. It interrupts. It’s annoying. And people mostly ignore ads anyway.
Inbound Marketing is the opposite.
Your search results return pages with an informative article, video, slide share, infographic, podcast or web page at the exact moment you are looking for that information. That makes people happy! If the information is accurate and well-written, you have gained their trust because they think you are the expert in that subject. Isn’t that a lot more effective than sticking an ad into their TV show?
Will they buy from you?
Maybe not the first time they engage with you. But over time, if you develop a relationship with that visitor, many will. Developing that relationship is the foundation of Inbound Marketing. It starts with an initial contact through a free piece of content that appears in search results when people search a keyword phrase.
Within the content, as we did here, there is a call to action (CTA). When the person clicks on the CTA to download a white paper, eBook or guide, they give your their email. That’s when automated marketing kicks in. It’s all in the followup.
Nurturing leads
It’s like meeting someone at a party. You have a nice conversation, they seem interested, and you get their phone number or email. It’s up to you to reach out and send a “nice to meet you” card, a text message to meet again, or send some information they may have mentioned in your conversation. That’s how Inbound works. Automated software tools like Hubspot make the followup a lot easier. Their tools automate email responses, track their progress and tailor messages to that specific person.
It is very personal—and done right, turns leads into buyers.
Explore Inbound Marketing Further
There is so much more to increasing sales through Inbound. If you are curious about how it can help your business, contact us. We are wild about this kind of marketing because we have seen the bottom line move for our clients.
