In my blog post addressing inbound vs outbound marketing, I wrote about the difficulties of marketing in general and the particular issues with the same-old, same-old of our interruptive marketing methodology.
Old models have us put energy into multiple ways of interrupting the flow and attention of potential clients.
The thought is we want them to stop looking at what they want and devote that focus toward what we want. I’d like to turn my attention to a different model of marketing, one that feels much more natural to us at Web Canopy Studio.
How much of our current marketing strategies are merely slightly upgraded versions of Fuller Brush or encyclopedia sales tricks?
Instead of going door-to-door or selling out of the back of our car we’ve figured out how to piggy-back our advertising on other items that end up in nearly every home: t.v., radio, and print.
Add in email, SMS, and mobile technology and it seems like sales messages follow us wherever we go. With this pervasive inundation it’s no wonder we work so hard to ignore ads and marketing efforts. THIS is where Inbound, or self-directed, marketing comes in.
Let’s see how.
When you are not thinking as a marketer, what do you spend your time researching or reading about online? Perhaps you are trying to find the last issue in the origin story of your favorite comic book character. Or maybe it's sports stats or gluten-free recipes. Perhaps you have a question you are trying to get answered for your work or organization. Let’s think for a moment from the standpoint of a average online user or shopper.
What are they looking for?
What questions are they trying to answer?
What problems are they trying to solve?
If these are the kinds of questions we start with it gets easier to understand how inbound marketing works. Instead of getting in your customer’s face with your programs, put time into the following types of activities.
Who is your ideal buyer? You probably have a few of them depending on your products and services. Spend some time creating personas for each of your ideal buyers and then creating content with each of these buyers in mind.
Some of the most important tools to attract the right users to your site are:
Once you’ve got visitors to your site, the next step is to convert those visitors into leads by gathering their contact information. At the very least, you’ll need their email addresses.
Anymore contact information is the most valuable currency there is to the online marketer. In order for your visitors to offer up that currency willingly, you need to offer them something in return.
That “payment” comes in the form of content, like eBooks, whitepapers, or tip sheets -- whatever information would be interesting and valuable to each of your personas.
Some of the most important tools in converting visitors to leads include:
This is always the hard part in sales and marketing. How do we know when a lead is ready to commit to becoming a customer? This is where some standard best practices come into play with some new ones thrown in:
This may be the largest departure from the old door-to-door sales philosophy. These days the notion of gaining repeat customers and building years-long relationships with them is crucial.
Brand loyalty now has an evangelistic connotation where our happy customers will move beyond simply telling their physical friends and neighbors, and will post their positive experiences online for a world of virtual connections to read.
We all expect to read product and company reviews when we shop or research online, and we want to make sure we have so delighted our customers that they spread our good name wherever they go. Tools used to delight customers include:
To conclude, much of the core marketing hasn’t changed. To do it well means we’re connecting with real people, who have real needs, and addressing their needs with our products and services.
What has changed are some of the ways we start that relationship and continue it over time. Inbound vs outbound marketing is more than just window dressing the same-old methods or updating the types of vacuums or brooms we cart around door-to-door.
It’s about rethinking how we interact with our clients, and being mindful of their journey as a buyer.
Photo credit goes out to Flickr user Chris Moore