What is Inbound Marketing?

What is Inbound Marketing?

Generate leads with your online reputation.

Inbound marketing is a strategic reversal of traditional marketing methodologies that rely on a cat-and-mouse game of chasing down potential prospects and attempting to convince them why they need your product or service.  Instead of employing a litany of push selling tactics with high rates of failure like traditional advertising or cold contacting, inbound marketing solutions focus on the concepts of developing your online reputation into a trusted resource and an influencer in your field of expertise.

Through the creation, optimization, and distribution of timely and resourceful content including articles, infographics, videos and more, your potential customers are able to locate your valuable resources on their own terms and when they need help most.  By presenting your customers with authoritative answers when they are seeking advice, via search engines, social media, apps, and other consumer driven mediums that are engaged as a result of a request, you earn their trust and ultimately their business.

What type of business needs to incorporate inbound marketing strategies?

The short answer is that every business needs to incorporate inbound marketing strategies.  Whether your business model is B2C, B2B, or a blend of the two, you have prospects and customers that you are constantly attempting to attract, supply, service, educate, and maintain.  Inbound marketing services offer the following benefits to these various areas of your business:

  • Sales Team – Inbound marketing elevates brand authority, increases the number of inbound leads, decreases the required rate of cold outreach, helps guide potential prospects through the various stages of the sales funnel, and shortens the sales cycle.
  • Account Management Team – Inbound marketing creates automated upsell opportunities that allow customers to delve deeper into the sales funnels.  As customers research topics, the next stage message with additional product and/or service offerings is presented and guides them further down the funnel.
  • Customer Service Team – Inbound marketing presents an inventory of optimized content across a variety of mediums that educate new and existing customers and answer questions in a self-guided format.

Why Do You Need To Use Inbound Marketing?

At the tap of a finger, the answer to nearly any question is available.  Your prospects are constantly seeking answers and they are inundated with search results, social media, videos, and a plethora of other forms of content that will provide solutions.  I challenge you to conduct searches for your pertinent terms and questions on sites like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.  Are you able to easily locate content that offers solutions to the most frequently asked questions that your prospects and customers ask?  If the answer is yes and that content is provided by your competitors, it is a certainty that you are missing out on connecting with prospects and you are leaving the door open for your existing customers to be swayed and potentially served by alternatives.  If the answer is no, you have just located an opportunity to increase your market share and stake your claim as an authority in your areas of focus.

How to Operate a Successful Inbound Marketing Campaign?

Successful inbound marketing campaigns combine the primary components of search, social, and content marketing solutions.

  1. This process initiates with the creation of a content strategy for your company blog, social properties, and any other in-house or outgoing messaging.
  2. Once the content strategy has been conceived, the next step is to create an editorial calendar for each of the various search, social, and content distribution mediums that are being managed.
  3. After the editorial calendar is completed, the content creation phase begins.
  4. Upon completion of each content item, the content should undergo proper optimization tactics for its intended medium of distribution.
  5. Last but not least, the content can be distributed into its desired channel.

When Can You Expect To Experience Results From Inbound Marketing Strategies?

As this process scales over time and there is a consistent saturation of content on the various mediums, consumer perception of your company as an authority spikes.  The residual effect is an evolution to an established brand, an increased number of incoming warm and hot leads, a leaner less stressed sales, account management, and customer service staff, and a more educated clientele.

Want to learn more about how inbound marketing can help you?  I encourage you to contact Pop Results.

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