Inbound Marketing. Some people know what this is, some have just heard of it, and a lot have no idea what it’s about.
Inbound marketing is a combination of many different (typically) online-based marketing efforts that revolves around consistent delivery; and more importantly, great content. Wait no, scratch that - amazing content.
Outbound marketing, as many know, consists largely of “cold call” tactics. Businesses approaching consumers (whether it’s B2B or B2C) in a direct, unsolicited fashion in an attempt to obtain relevant business. This tactic for sales is generally a numbers game. The more calls made generally will result in a higher payout (in terms of closed business). The smaller the data set, the smaller the percentage of closed business.
Inbound marketing is much different. It allows you to generate traffic, cultivate leads, drive them through a potential sales funnel, and ultimately have your resulting contacts being much more qualified and ready for purchase after contact. Inbound marketing is not executed with the purpose of obtaining a sale (for example, you as a widget manufacturer should not expect a blog post about this great new widget to equal a sale of said widget); instead, your inbound marketing efforts should be done in a way that builds trust with your consumer market, provides quality information to your users, and establishes you as a leader in your industry.
Sound difficult? It can be, but with a proper strategy, your efforts can be made efficiently and your return on investment (ROI) can be much higher.
Let’s cover 5 of the most popular inbound marketing efforts that can be done easily by small businesses:
- Blogging -
Blogging is an easy way to start building rapport within your industry. By providing industry-leading information to your site visitors, you can build the reputation of being an authoritative, industry leader. However, and this is especially true with B2B organizations, this task can be daunting. Let’s say you’re an elevator manufacturing company - what can you blog about that would be interesting? Well, take a look at this elevator manufacturer and their explanation of the Australian construction economy. In this example, not only do they blog about the state of their industry and what’s been going on (obviously very good info for those that are looking to purchase, looking to sell, etc. within their industry), but they do it in a creative (infographic) way, and provide a way to naturally build links back to their site (embeddable graphic).
This does 3 things -
One: It gives a unique and interesting piece of content to their users and generates interest in their company. I can almost guarantee that there was probably no other elevator company in Australia who was participating in inbound marketing like this. That makes them a pioneer and provides brand recognition.
Two: Infographics are link magnets. People love them and if done well, will most likely share them with other people as well.
Three: They took care of making it super easy to share with others by giving the embed code out freely. What does this do? Further that brand recognition and build natural links back to their website. So not only do you have someone sharing your content with others, but you also have them linking back automatically in the process.
AWESOME!
- Email Marketing -
Probably the second most under-utilized, low-cost marketing option (next to blogging), email marketing provides an easy way to aggregate information, promotions, organizational updates, and more into an easy-to-read and easy-to-distribute package. Easily import your latest blog posts, social media stream, featured products, and more with a few clicks of a button (depending on your other platforms, of course) and send them out to your customers. How could showing off all you’re doing to your customers get much easier? What’s even more great about email marketing is the ability be able to track the interaction with your emails and your users. Want to know if text links or image-based links are better? You can track that. Want to know how many of your 1,234 subscribers opened the email? Even better, want to know how many times and when they opened the email? You can track that.
Long and short of it is, you can provided timely (and timed) information to your users and track how it integrates with all of your other marketing efforts; and ultimately, your bottom line.
And the great thing is - depending on your email service provider, it can be very low cost, or even free! (We love MailChimp and haven’t paid a dime for it in 2 years).
- Social Media -
Yeah, we know, everyone is telling you to get on the social media bus, and well, you should! Did you know that Bing is now integrating Facebook and Twitter into its results (ref: Gizmodo)? Well, they are! So what does this mean for you and your social media efforts? What it means is that if you want your content to be found, you need to start distributing it to other channels, including your social channels.
Now, that being said,
