What is inbound marketing and why should I care about it?
This is a great question and we’re really glad you asked it!
Inbound marketing is the strategic alignment of marketing activity to get potential clients to come to you. As a practice it is about creating marketing that lets you get found more easily on the Internet and strongly positions your business as a potential supplier of consulting or professional services to prospective clients.
The key difference to more traditional marketing activity is that you don’t waste time and money on scatter-gun marketing like advertising or other ‘cold’ outbound strategies where you attempt to stimulate interest and sales. This approach is inherently financially inefficient, because you don’t know who out there is looking for your services and who is not.
This sentiment has probably never been better captured than in the quote attributed to US merchant John Wanamaker: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."
Historically, consultancies haven’t worried too much about this. Consultancies tend to be good at working their networks and those little black books of contacts to find work. However, as competition increases and the most tech-savvy firms steam ahead with inbound marketing, others could get left behind.
Inbound marketing brings people to your door who have identified a business need and are actively searching for information to help determine their next action or someone to immediately help them with it.
Inbound marketing has been a growing trend for over a decade. Businesses of all types have embraced inbound marketing because it is simply more effective and efficient than an outbound approach.
Here are 7 ways to get inbound marketing working for your business.
1. A strong website
Your website is your shop window to the world and the focal point for inbound marketing. It needs to look modern and function correctly and follow the conventions for conveying information so visitors can find what they need quickly. What signals does a sub-standard website give you if you are evaluating a potential supplier? Unless you know that firm builds better mousetraps, you’re likely to look elsewhere…
2. High quality content
The writing and images on webpages that describe your services is your ‘content’. So are blogs, whitepapers, case studies, slideshow presentations, infographics, podcasts and videos. Content–rich websites are the essential fuel and a central point of focus upon which inbound marketing depends to attract potential clients. In consulting and other areas of professional practice establishing ‘thought leadership’ through content helps key practitioners in your business to project their expertise and original thinking. Think of good content as the most colourful flowers in the garden – they are designed to naturally attract more honeybees…
3. SEO
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the craft of making your website friendly to Google. A website needs to be technically correct in the way it is built and configured. The content needs to be written so that it is rich in keywords that relate to your business and services which people might use when searching with Google. From the perspective of SEO, a poorly executed website has reduced relevance and is not returned high up the natural search results in Google, so it is essential to get it right. You have been warned…!
4. PPC
Pay-per-click is where Google places ads for your business amongst the sponsored links at the top its search results pages. The highest bidder gets the top position. Simple. But many have found this to be an expensive approach. If you want to integrate PPC as part of your inbound strategy, then make sure every aspect is optimised and the true value measured. Most of all, bid sensibly and compare overall effectiveness of your inbound marketing with and without PPC. Failure to do so will make Google seriously richer without doing the same for you!
5. Lead capture
One of the keys to executing an inbound strategy effectively is to know who is visiting your website and what they are interested in. ‘Gated content’ requests names, email addresses and phone numbers from site visitors when they want to download white papers. You learn who they are and what they are reading up on. Over time you refine and distil your database into a charitable sponsor that just keeps on giving…
6. Nurture your leads
Email addresses gathered through lead capture are where we really get smart with an inbound strategy. These become a database of contacts that we can regularly touch and nurture through automated email activity. Nurturing actions can include sending out newsletters and offering more content that might be of interest. And, you can measure, and see who is clicking to read or download pieces. This lets you establish levels of interest and see who’s warm, who’s hot and who’s properly smokin’!
7. Turn leads into sales
Take your warmest leads up to the next level by getting them into the sales pipeline through establishing direct communication by calling them. Securing the appointment for that crucial first meeting with a warm lead is a much easier proposition than trying to book one through a cold and frosty call. You don’t need to say that you are ringing because they have visited your website, that can just be a happy coincidence as far as they are concerned!
Chase business and deliver projects with Metis
Once inbound marketing has done its job of reaching out to new clients at exactly the right point in the buying cycle, then consulting and professional services businesses can rely on Metis. Metis helps you to chase business, deliver projects and make sense of everything else in between.