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Cameron 
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Share Secrets don’t make friends, or is it the other way around? Whether you are a marketing professional, or CEO or founder of a business, it’s important to always take advantage of new marketing strategies that are emerging, so that you and your business can flourish. This makes sense, right? Well, for most, this effort seems to get blown under the rug, quite a bit. Searching for the right marketing strategy for your business can be very time consuming, let alone frustrating, but in reality, will make a significant impact once you find the right fit! Generally, marketing efforts for majority of businesses starting out, or even already established have been using Outbound marketing efforts. This marketing technique sheds light on paid advertising through print, radio, television as well as focusing on email and cold-calls. This form of marketing is generally used by most businesses, but when you are starting out, you don’t have money to just waste on Outbound efforts because you are basically shooting an arrow in the dark when trying to gather the right leads. Gathering the rights leads makes the world of difference, compared to just gathering leads that are not cultivated or beleive in your product. You want your close rate ratio to be higher than your intended goal, not below. So how can we achieve this? I’m going to let you in on a little secret, shhhhhh, it’s Inbound. Inbound marketing is a technique where you are educating your audience and shedding light to their pains, gains, and solutions through quality content. This form of marketing is very valuable for your business because you are cultivating your ideal audience through four main stages:
These four stages are the backbone of your Inbound marketing methodology and is more cost-efficient than majority of your general Outbound efforts. There’s a reason why Inbound marketing is effective, whether you are focusing on B2B or B2C. Inbound marketing can also align your sales and marketing team together, helping them stay on the same page with one another, because we all know how marketing and sales can have their difficulties working together. Let’s dive in and get to know a little more about Inbound marketing and the methodology behind it!
So, now that you’re in on the little secret, let’s take a deeper dive into why Inbound marketing will be the secret to your success. Let’s start from the beginning. Before you can do anything with Inbound, take an assessment of your business, find out what your product does for your ideal customer, inside and out. Once you assess your business, your marketing and sales team should be on the same page in regards to knowledge of your product and your company’s goals. After you you assess your company and product, it’s time to jump into figuring out who your ideal Buyer Personas are. A Buyer Persona is a detailed outline of who your ideal customers really are. You are making sure you outline their challenges, goals and responsibilities, whether you are targeting B2B customers or B2C. This will take a little time and research from your end but is well worth it in the long run. You can capture specific data through your social platforms, website traffic analytics and good ol fashion interviewing . Ideally, you want to shoot for three different personas, and focus on the ones that matter most. You can always create more down the line, but for now, just focus on your three best! Now that you have assessed your company’s product and your ideal Buyer Personas, it’s time to map out your customer’s Buyer’s Journey! If your Buyer Personas are incorrect, your Buyer’s Journey will be skewed as well. Everything is connected and should be tackled one step at a time. When figuring out your Buyer’s Journey, you will need to be thinking outside the box and make sure you truly understand what your ideal buyer will go through before making that amazing purchase. The four key phases of your Buyer’s Journey will be to attract, convert, close, and delight! Let’s take a more in-depth look at the four steps, shall we?
Attracting customers has been part of every marketing effort throughout history. What is different with this process is that you are attracting your ideal customers through quality content that is relative to their life and problems. Content with applicable information for your reader. That’s the key to attracting your ideal customers and create organic traffic with leads. When someone has a pain, whether for a business or personal-self, research needs to be done to try and figure out the best approach to finding a solution. Search engines such as Google+ have shed light to the vast amount of information out there. By utilizing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and specific keywords, you’re matching what your ideal customers would search for, thus ranking your content higher than others. This will allow better traffic so your reader can actually read your content and not someone else’s. Attracting your ideal customer is the first step of the process and has to be timed correctly. If your timing is off, then your content can become outdated and not as relevant as other articles.
Now that you have attracted your ideal customers with informative content that you created, then what? Then we want to convert them into a lead. Keep in mind, we don’t just want any type of leads, we want quality leads. We want leads that truly care about solving their problem and taking advantage of the opportunity out there. That is also why it’s important to have relevant, informative content to give to your reader. You want to build trust and establish a connection between you and the reader. Providing specialized call-to-actions, along with premium offers are a prime example to attain your readers contact information after they have completed the content you provided. Call-to-actions are generally at the end of the content piece to inform your reader that you can “learn more”, “schedule a demo”, and so on… If you are able to attain your readers personal information such as name, email, and company, for example, they just became a quality lead! Hoorah! Even if the number of quality leads that come in are smaller than you are generally used to, you will have a higher probability of closing that lead.
Speaking about closing, let’s close those deals! After attracting your ideal customer, and converting them into a quality lead, it’s now up to your dedicated and passionate sales team to close the deal. This is mainly done by email, phone calls or in-person meetings. This is also where your sales team and marketing team are able to work together to achieve your company’s goal in closing the deal. At this stage, you will hear your leads pains and struggles, and consult them on options that can be of benefit to their pains. It’s important to remember that not all leads are ready to make that deal right off the bat. You have to nurture your prospect though a specific funnel and see if you’re the right fit, first. This will be a process of back and forth for until both parties have come to an agreement. Closing a deal is an artform in itself, so make sure you know your product inside and out, allowing your lead to understand the benefits to what you are specifically offering toward their goal.
Welcome to the final stage of your secret marketing process, the delight stage! This can be a very fun stage to enter because now, you have helped your customer through the Buyer’s Journey. Your customers have read your content, submitted their information, and have made a purchase. Now, it’s up to your marketing and sales team to continuously keep in touch with your customer and make sure their pains are solved. It’s up to you and your business to uphold that relationship between you and the paying customer. You’ll be surprised how fast word of mouth spreads. Current customers spend 67% more than new customers. Why? Because they already know it works, they already have gone through the process and experienced the benefits of your product. Delighting your customer is a very important aspect of your marketing process that is often overlooked. Take the time to see how else you can help your customers and create that climate that will benefit you both as time goes on.
After everything we have covered, the secret’s out, Inbound marketing can be that missing puzzle piece to your success as a business. Once you grasp the methodology of attract, convert, close, and delight, you will go far. When you can combine both Inbound marketing and Outbound efforts, you have a strong recipe for generating quality leads. If you are considering utilizing what Inbound marketing has to offer, then make sure you take the time in properly address each stage of your Buyer’s Journey correctly, so that both parties, the reader/potential lead and customer are happy. Provide informative content that is quality to the reader with actionable premium offers. Help your potential customers achieve their goal and create a positive, and trustworthy relationship between you and your customer. Responsify is an all-in-one growth content marketing solution for businesses no matter the size. Helping increase organic traffic and quality leads for you and your business. If you are curious to learn more about Inbound marketing efforts and how you can apply them, schedule a 1-on-1 strategy session with our lead strategist today!
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