In traditional (outbound) marketing, companies focus on finding customers. Inbound marketers flip outbound marketing on its head. Inbound marketing is the concept of integrating content, search and social media to help prospects find your company (instead of you finding them) through the sharing of information they consider valuable and choose to engage with.
Essentially, you want to consistently generate enough interest and engagement so that prospects choose to continuously access your content because they’ve come to know that whatever you publish has a high likelihood of being valuable to them.
Inbound marketing alone may be sufficient for a company to target, convert and retain clients if (and only if) the company is well known and well established within the industry. Victoria’s Secret has one of the largest Facebook followings, with over 17 million fans. Their brand is known worldwide because they have done a fair amount of outbound marketing over the years with their catalogs and commercials. Could they get away with eliminating their outbound marketing? Probably. But even Victoria’s Secret knows that to maximize their marketing investment, they should not stop utilizing traditional marketing methods, such as email marketing, e-newsletters, and direct mail marketing.
Companies that do not yet have a universally recognizable brand do not have the luxury of even considering using inbound marketing as their sole strategy. It takes exposure to the masses to develop a brand and corporate identity, educate potential prospects about the company, and begin building credibility and trust.
The most successful inbound marketing campaigns are comprised of three primary components:
- Content – whitepapers, ebooks, podcasts, blogs, vlogs, infographics
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Social Media
Content creation is the heart and soul of any marketing campaign, but inbound marketing cannot survive without it. It is the foundation and cornerstone of online strategies. Information attracts prospects to your company. How helpful, informative and relevant that information is will determine how effective it is.
SEO makes it easier for the right prospects to find you. By utilizing the right tools, keyword analysis and link-building, you maximize your visibility on organic searches for terms that match what you are communicating. Once traffic begins to flow to your site(s), your page ranking increases, and, in turn, so does your SEO. It’s kind of an inverted tornado – once the winds begin picking up, they increase and whirl until you’re at the pinnacle (page one on Google).
Social Media amplifies the impact of your content marketing efforts. Qualified leads turn to social media networks for honest, authentic reviews by existing clients and customers before making decisions. When your content is discussed in an open, public forum like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Wordpress, Tumblr, and other outlets, it not only helps increase your search engine reputation, but, perhaps even more importantly, your company’s overall reputation.
The goal of inbound marketing is to get qualified prospects to knock on your door, instead of you canvassing the neighborhood with a flashlight searching for leads. As with all other types of marketing, past and present, inbound marketing requires that you:
- Understand and penetrate your target markets
- Add value
- Build trust
- Consistently deliver valuable content that is relevant to your markets
- Build relationships
- Provide clear calls to action
- Solicit and promote feedback and discussion
- Track your success
Inbound marketing is an ongoing process and strategy with none of the expiration dates or campaign deadlines that exist in many outbound marketing strategies. Building trust, adding value and establishing relationships take time and consistency.
The simple fact is that outbound and inbound strategies (like email newsletters and social media) are not adversaries; they’re complementary tools that can be used to support and enhance each other. By weaving email marketing and social media together as part of your traditional mix, you can dramatically enhance the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Why? It could be as simple as the quantity of touches. Blogs and other social media outlets have the opportunity to obtain much more traffic than your email newsletter list can grow. The content you post on your blog may be dense with the keywords that search users are using, which may not even be the same as the keywords that SEO experts identify or recommend for your firm. Your email newsletter can drive readers to your blog or website or Facebook page, but the content on those sites remains searchable in between e-newsletter launches.
A common thread between email newsletters and social media is relevant content. Each become more effective the more relevant they are. Just as readers won’t open or click on an email that isn’t of interest to them, they’ll pass right over a post on a social media site that misses the mark as well.
Outbound and inbound marketing should be integrated for maximum return on investment. Because content is the key to both outbound and inbound marketing, use that to your advantage.
- Use your email newsletter and your blog as “content laboratories” to determine what your prospects are interested in, what drives the most traffic, inspires the most comments, etc.
- Set up “preference centers” for your email newsletter and blog – let your prospects tell you what they want to see, read and receive.
- Identify the channels you want to focus on, but remain flexible enough to adapt the strategy based upon the metrics you reap and analyze.
- Mix and match your methodologies until you find the best recipe for growth and long term success.
- “Push” your prospects to your social sites and “pull” your prospects into your outbound strategies (using sign-up forms).
- Cultivate relationships for the long term, using both outbound and inbound strategies. Nurture with relevant content.
Remember that consumers are savvy and long to “connect” in our increasingly impersonal, electronic world. Be somewhat ironic and use electronic media to reach out and touch your prospects. Make those connections.
Build upon the data that you pull from these interactions and data points by delivering even more content in creative ways that fits the needs of your target market – ebooks, whitepapers, webinars, videos, cartoons – and share the content using all of the channels and methods at your disposal.
Your BizActions service can be used in many different ways. One of the services areas some members forget to promote is seminars. You can incorporate your own custom Sponsor Content articles in your email newsletter and effectively market to your entire database. This is a feature included in your service which is very cost-effective.
With tax season 2012 in the rearview mirror and spring in full bloom, you may be looking for an additional stream of revenue. That could be a new niche – such as the rapidly growing area of alternative energy – or it might be a more closely targeted audience for an existing niche– like “financial planning for professional women in the southwestern United States.” The better you define your target, the more affordable your marketing efforts will be and the more likely you will be to attract new clients. After all, most people find a special appeal in getting necessary services from an advisor that is focused on the needs and desires of a narrow group that includes them.
We all know that new marketing strategies attract marketers like moths to a flame. For some reason, marketers assume “out with the old and in with the new” is the only way to improve results. The discussion about outbound marketing versus
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Do you need to track signups for a seminar or other event and would like to have integration with your e-newsletter database? With BizActions Event Registration you can build a registration form that is housed on BizActions servers or hosted on your website. If turned on, this add-on feature allows the ability to market events through your BizActions email newsletter and through your BizActions Email Radar. Then you can track signups within your database of members based on a specific marker for each event that populates into a special database field. An automatic confirmation message is sent to those signing up for the event and to the internal team member handling the signups. Finally you can then create groups of those who have, or have not signed up for a particular event to send follow up messages.
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Your online marketing tools can serve a purpose beyond marketing. A number of our Estate Planning Attorneys also utilize their email newsletter database to remind both their clients and themselves when an impending consultation has been scheduled. Their objective is to meet with clients about once a year in order to go over life changes or changes in the law that may directly impact their clients’ wills, trusts and/or estate tax implications. A major factor in the success of these firms is their ability to engage with their clients in a way that leads to repeat visits from their existing client base.
When I talk with other marketing directors about their e-communications, e-newsletters, blogs, social media, etc., I am frequently asked a variation of the ROI question, "How do I know if I am getting my money's worth?" Marketing directors and partners want to make sure they are getting value for the resources expended to communicate with their clients and prospects. I usually ask, "What did you expect to get?" It surprises me how often the answer to that question is, "I'm not sure." If you don't have a well thought out plan with documented expectations, it will always be hard to measure success or to make improvements.
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Marketing is a lot like spring gardening to grow new opportunities for your firm. Updating your marketing goals and plan is as important to your business as feeding the soil in your garden.
When you're looking at the reports for your email newsletter "Open" refers to the number of readers who have looked at your newsletter in their inbox, regardless of whether or not they clicked to read a full article. Open rates can be a good overview of how well your newsletter is being received in general, and they can also provide you with a deliverability indicator. A sudden drop in open rates may mean that your content may need some troubleshooting.
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