Get Found and Get With it – The New Formula of Inbound Marketing

British businessman Philip Green rightly said, “Good, bad or indifferent, if you are not investing in new technology, you are going to be left behind.” Technology creates new opportunity.

From a mere unidirectional marketing strategy that started in 1950s, there has been a paradigm shift in the way products reach customers today.

A transition from stereotyped relationship marketing for least informed customers to a more power packed digital or rather mobile marketing for the current well informed customers.

Customers are engaged today via multiple channels and thus marketers have more options to connect with the customers.

The whole idea of marketing today focuses on consumer experience. This is accomplished by two way process – Inbound and Outbound marketing, a sort of pull and push strategy.

Option one is to push your customers to buy your products (slowly diminishing in recent days), and option two is a wiser way of pulling your customers towards your offerings (widely adopted method).

All thanks to digitalization and the advancement of internet service. With right strategy, you can make your audience find you and you can get what you want to.

Inbound Marketing Is the Core Function of Any Business Today

Brands are battling for attention. Selling is no longer linear. Marketing is charged up with new role to perform with superior breadths and depths considering digitalization.

Implementing an inbound marketing program is now mandatory for B2B brands, says Gartner in its report titled, “CMO Perspective: Put Five B2B Marketing Trends to Work for Your Brand.”

Companies are three times more likely to see a higher ROI on inbound marketing campaigns than on outbound marketing, says yet another new marketing report. Completely data-driven, Inbound marketing is Real-time.

The method gives you complete freedom to create traffic, engage them, excite them and convert them. The process involves right from identifying prospects to generating leads, to converting them into customers, and finally to retain them.

A synergy is created within the company
Creates lots of buying through a process undertaken within the company
Business building
A downright essential / strategic imperative
Businesses can actually use their leads from inbound marketing and carry on with their outbound marketing with those leads. For example those who visited your webpage, those who like your product and requested product information, or those who filled the form found in any of your landing pages.

What Contributes To A Great Inbound Marketing?

Content Marketing
Social Media Marketing

Content

Content marketing takes a big place in inbound marketing. Great customer experiences do not happen instantly.

It takes effective and active strategies. Ultimately it is all about increasing your profile and value. Your brands have to be online to get wider reach.

Content is the only means by which you can deliver true value to your audience. Contents need to be an integrated part within every business. As Robert Rose, a senior analyst rightly said, it helps you to show your customers that you are the one.

Through content marketing, you inform your audience, educate them on their interest and entertain them with valuable information that will help them to buy your product.

They need to be continuously delivered at frequent intervals.

Key Points to Remember While Generating Contents

Conversations are expanding into customer experience today. So, converse with your customers frequently in order to inculcate a habit within every visitor to come back again and again. Content marketing is worth only if it is a repeatable process.
It is not only about creating quality contents, but it is about creating relevant content too. You need to speed up fast to understand your customers and then deliver information as per the need.
Right from creating awareness to retaining an existing customer, all interactions is an experience for your customers. So, don’t just focus on creating a product value via your contents, rather focus on creating brand value too.
Integrate social media and Email to leverage your content.
Be creative. Creativity has greater value.
Analysts call this as a simple, focused, effective and more impactful process.

Types of Content Marketing

Although there are several ways to carry out with your content marketing, the most commonly practiced ones are;

Blogging – Creates trust – Can include articles, testimonials, product review etc.
Newsletter, Case studies, Webinar, Whitepapers, Surveys, FAQs – Basically to educate the audience.
Guest Posts – Contents from others.
Customer Stories – Experience of customers that they share with you.
Live Events
Infographics
Interactive Content

Social Media

According to Jan 2016 statistics, global active social media users accounted to approximately 2.3 billion. This proves the need for marketing using social media.

In recent days, Social media spending is soaring with more marketers adopting this method to promote their brand, generate lead and retain customers all in real-time, instantly.

Though many has learned the secret to take this well, few marketers are investing a lot but not able to strategize their move properly. A recent survey from CMO indicates that marketers should better link their social media efforts to the organization’s overall marketing strategies.

The point is to have a clear objective to handle social media marketing. Social media team need to work it out with the branding team and customer support team to understand and strategize well. Understand that brands cannot be talking to everyone.

Social media team should know the importance of keywords, micro blogging, page rankings, ad ratings, ad positioning, content positioning and link building.

Have a basic process to strategize your decisions on social media marketing.
Define your approach.
Set goals to achieve ROI.
This will help you to decide on your social media spending.
Know the tools and techniques.
Tracking results will help you build your strategies accordingly.

Final Thoughts

It is clear now that the roles of marketers are getting diverse and challenging.

No matter what type of business you have; what size of business you handle; which location; or even how old is your business; Inbound marketing is sure to offer you growth.

Just keep track of the tools that you use and frequently keep track of those analytics.

Test and try all possibilities. Grab complete connectivity with your audience via social media and keep them entertained and engaged with your powerful contents.

Inbound marketing is soaring and it is not going to slow down in the near future.

You can only expect more growth in the coming years. Test, target and get more personalized. Get found and get with it the right way.