Small businesses on Cape Cod and the islands have two methods of increasing awareness and therefore sales - inbound and outbound marketing.
Outbound marketing includes digital and print newspaper ads, television ads, billboards, cold calls, and media ads in local magazines like Cape Cod Life or Cape & Plymouth Business, while inbound marketing relies on slower content marketing. , such as blogs, emails, etc., feed and personalize parenting recommendations. Inbound marketing is a versatile strategy for generating traffic, converting customers and analyzing marketing initiatives. This is the opposite of flooding potential buyers with advertisements, postcards and emails.
If you really want to understand the concept of inbound marketing, you need to consider the buying continuum to build awareness: from ignorance to awareness to trust, then to trial/purchase and repurchase and/or recommendation.
The whole process starts with original content that drives potential buyers to Google for Business and ultimately to your website. It is a unified strategy that combines various marketing strategies into one set of communication tools to increase awareness and understanding of your product/service/brand – your offering. If the content contains relevant variations of the call to action, there is a chance to convert those potential visitors from visitors to buyers.
An inbound marketing strategy consists of five ordered categories: Owned and Earned Media, Landing Pages, Leads, Sales Engagement, and Customer Retention.
In marketing, we look at the sales funnel - the number of leads needed to complete a sale. When we consider inbound marketing, we can think of a funnel as a way to organize our work. SmartInsights looks at the three stages of the funnel - TOFU, MOFU and BOFU - at the top, middle and bottom of the funnel. TOFU generates leads, MOFU generates leads and BOFU generates closed sales. In the first phase of TOFU, eligible content is approved for sale. Content is the start of a conversation that leads readers to your website - your entry point.
At the MOFU level, we publish and distribute original content and share it so that stakeholders can benefit from the publication. We measure this stage by fans, subscribers, visitors and external links. This step also creates the basis for decision making. Your content is searchable. The original or curated content you post is relevant, inspiring, useful and problem-solving. Metrics are leads and shares.
In the BOFU phase, the purchase is completed. This is where leads are converted into customers and measured by orders, revenue and average order value. Once the exchange has passed the BOFU stage, the focus is on repeat purchases and referrals.
Grass Root Marketing, Inc. Study the impact of inbound marketing. The firm found that (1) blogging companies had 97% more links to their website. (2) 46% of daily searches are for products or services. (3) 72% of business owners/managers say social media helps close deals. (4) 74% of US adults prefer email marketing to sales messages. The key is to generate website traffic that shows your solution to their problem(s) with a call to action so they can continue the conversation and move them through the purchasing continuum.
If inbound marketing is part of your plan to reach your sales goals for 2023, remember Guido Bartalacci's advice. standardization. Make your story consistent across all the platforms you use for inbound and outbound marketing.
reality If you want standardization and consistency, the story must appeal to the right people in the right place. Each distinct segment of the customer base has different pain points and therefore offers different pain benefits.
Optimize. As inbound marketing activity increases, more data is learned about each target customer, and you must tailor your messages and channels to the specific needs, wants, and desires of each customer segment.
Personalize it. To make every target customer feel special. It is estimated that almost every person receives 1500-2000 marketing messages per day. To avoid being ignored, you need to personalize your messages so that it feels like the message is just for them.
empathetic To avoid being blinded by data, show that you understand the problems of your target customers and that they are not alone in dealing with these problems. When an emotional connection is formed, the exchange ceases to be transactional and becomes relational.
The goal is to generate inbound leads that will lead to closed sales, increased revenue and profits, and therefore sustainable business growth. Bartalacci reminds us: “Remember that standardization is essential to scaling your marketing team. Optimizing your strategy takes time and experimentation. Gathering enough information about your buyers to effectively personalize and contextualize your content also requires a certain level of trial and error.
Mark L. Contributed by Goldberg, Score Cape Cod and Islands Certified Teacher. www.score.org/capecod, capecodscore@scorevolunteer.org, 508-775-4884. Sources: Guido Bartolacci, New Breed, Grass Roots Marketing, Inc., Inbound Marketing Strategy, Slingshot SEO, Grass Roots Marketing, www.inboundmarketingforsales.com, Inbound Marketing Funnel, First 10 and SmartInsights.
This article originally appeared in the Cape Cod Times: Inbound Marketing Is the Only Strategy for Generational Traffic
