You may have heard the buzz about inbound marketing but not yet had it explained to you in a way that makes sense. Inbound marketing is a 180-degree reversal of old-hat, outbound marketing techniques.
Just about every type of business these days, understands the importance of maintaining an online presence. Most companies work hard to develop an attractive and informative website and to put out ads, both on and off line, that hoping they will generate leads. Unfortunately, for those who rely solely on direct outbound advertisements, web users are getting alarmingly savvy at ignoring, avoiding, or deactivating such adds.
Related Blog: 5 Reasons Inbound Marketing Works
Inbound marketing is so effective because it brings the customers into your website doors. The more visitors you generate, the greater the odds of making them a lead and converting them into a customer. Many of your new clients can then become promoters of your business on social media sites and elsewhere.
The Process
The process of transforming visitors into happy and loyal customers works like this:
- Via keywords, blog posts, SEO, social media posts, etc., you gain the attention of web users without ever interrupting them. Interruptions, like commercials on the television set, often get "muted" out by people who feel annoyed by them. Thus, they can sometimes have an effect opposite to that which was intended. Inbound marketing helps you attract customers with high-quality content that feeds into what they are already doing.
- Next, Inbound converts those attracted into "leads" by means of form-filling tasks, landing pages, and other calls to action. By blending in with the topics people are already pursuing online, inbound marketing tactics increase the chances that people will take this crucial next step.
Finally, inbound marketing involves follow-up of these contacts via email marketing campaigns, signals, workflows, etc. It also uses social media and other means to allow new customers to promote your business for you.
Closed-Loop Analytics
Superior content placed in all the right places can make inbound marketing work for you, but you will need some way to accurately gauge its effects. That task is facilitated by closed-loop analytics. You can view the exact number of visits, contacts, and customers generated by each inbound marketing tool. For example, you can see what percentage of referral links ended up yielding real customers as compared with, say, manually entered direct traffic. The breakdown is given for email marketing, organic searches (Google, Yahoo, etc.), social media posts, paid-search advertisements, and more. You will discover what is working best and be better equipped to adjust so as to reach even more customers in the future.
If you have noticed a slump in the output of your outbound advertisement methods, you may want to give inbound methods a try. This strategy can render the best results.
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