When it comes to digital marketing, there is always room for improvement. An inbound marketing campaign is a great way to boost your return on investment and to get much better results for your business. The popularity of inbound marketing has been on the rise in the last decade, and close to three-quarters of organisations were already primarily using inbound marketing techniques in 2016. Don’t be left behind. You don’t need to be an expert in order to launch your own inbound marketing campaign. If you want to enjoy the benefits of inbound marketing, you can start with the following simple strategies.
Create a strategy to increase your return on investment
An effective inbound marketing campaign is one that successfully converts site visitors into leads, and then into customers in a systematic way over a period of time. Companies invest a lot of money into content creation, website design, social media marketing, and running of promotions, and a good inbound marketing strategy should be able to integrate these marketing tools in order to increase the ROI (return on investment) of the company or business. Converting a first time visitor into a customer is something that more than two-thirds of companies struggle with. In order to successfully turn visitors into customers, you need to craft a strategy that will work like a funnel that directs people towards your products.
The inbound marketing campaign funnel
Think of your marketing strategy as a funnel that consists of three parts, the top, the middle, and the bottom. The top part brings visitors to your website, the middle part identifies the good leads, and the bottom part cultivates the customers. Only a small fraction of site visitors make for good leads, and an even smaller group of them are likely to become customers. As long as you understand that this is the nature of digital businesses, you will be able to focus your resources on effective inbound marketing, and this will make your whole strategy much more cost-effective, and successful.
Part 1 of your funnel strategy
The first part of your strategy is aimed at bringing visitors to your site. To accomplish this, you have to do broad social media marketing, advertising, and organic lead generation. You can make use of pay per click advertising, or you can try to attract organic visitors by creating high-quality content. People are likely to visit your website if you provide information that solves a problem for them, so good quality content should be authoritative and actionable. You should put tools and features on your web pages that will help you capture the visitors’ information so that you can identify those who are potentially good leads.
Part 2 of your funnel strategy
When it comes to identifying good leads, you need to collect demographic information on your site visitors and decide which ones are more likely to be interested in your products, and which ones are more likely to be one time visitors. Depending on the nature of your website or business, you can use many different criteria to tell which site visitors have the potential to be long-term clients. If possible you can use online forms and surveys to collect information which you can then use to categorise your site visitors. You need to nurture your good leads, entice them, and prepare them to become customers.
Part 3 of your funnel strategy
At this stage, you have identified your leads, and you have cultivated their trust in your brand through the actionable content that you have offered them. It’s now time to cash in on the relationship that you have developed with your leads. You can present them with promotions, free trials, and other product incentives in order to convert them into actual customers. It’s important that you don’t rush from the second stage to this stage, but instead, you should take your time to understand your prospective customers. Moving slowly also allows your leads to build trust. If you present your offers too quickly, some of your potential customers can shy away before fully finding out what you have to offer.
How to nurture your leads
Most people tend to focus most of their marketing budget on lead generation, but inbound marketing campaigns focus on all the above stages, including nurturing leads and converting them into sales. A good inbound marketing strategy is one that puts a lot of effort into nurturing leads. Leads are usually nurtured through email marketing and content marketing.
Nurturing leads through email marketing
The affordability of email marketing is part of the reason why inbound marketing is so cost-effective. Emails generate more sales than social media marketing, and they cost less than most lead generation methods. All sorts of businesses use email, and people tend to trust emails messages that are professionally written. You should send valuable content to potential customers who are interested enough to offer you their email addresses. Even if they are not ready to buy your products at first, this can change over time as they read your emails and begin to trust your brand.
Nurturing leads through content marketing
Content is a powerful tool that you can use to win over prospective customers that are on the fence. Content comes in many forms, including video clips, eBooks, blog posts and articles, white papers, user manuals, guides, among many others. Most consumers form opinions on brands and products based on the quality of content that comes along with them. The modern consumer is less susceptible to aggressive sales tactics, and he or she is more likely to base their decision on information that is relayed through content. You should, therefore, invest in good quality, authoritative, entertaining, and actionable content. Investing in good quality copy can help you turn more site visitors into customers.
Why inbound marketing is so cost effective
Inbound marketing has been credited with doubling conversion rates, and most companies find that it is cost-effective and it increases their ROI. Rather than channeling your entire marketing budget towards SEO, you can redirect some of it to inbound marketing and enjoy higher conversion rates. While SEO may bring in tons of potential clients, inbound marketing ensures that those potential clients don’t leave before fully considering the benefits of your services. Inbound marketing is cost effective because it reduces the cost of acquiring customers while increasing your conversion rate.
If you’d like to discuss an inbound marketing strategy with Pixeld, check out our Digital Marketing Wingman service that partners with great businesses and makes them greater.
