What Is Inbound Marketing?

In the old days, the salesperson had all the power.

"Conventional sales" tactics date back to a time well before the internet. Over 100 years ago, in that old world, sales people had all the knowledge and went out to their customers to sell their products. Customer education came from the salesperson. Salespeople had the power and consumers relied on them to gain the knowledge of their products, often under a cloud of suspicion.

 

The Age of Outbound Interruption Is Dead

Traditional sales use outbound marketing and old advertising methods to try and interrupt people; people don't want to be interrupted and now with the fragmentation of media they have the choice to turn off annoying advertising.

Outbound marketing is the process of salespeople going out to get prospects using lead generation techniques. For many businesses they revert to cold calling to do this. Interrupting consumers when they have no desire for your product is a throw-back to the days of the travelling salesperson. Cold calling is a difficult and expensive way to create leads.

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What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound content marketing is creating actions that attract visitors to your website. Once on your site, inbound then converts the customer to a lead based on the content and structure of your website.

With trustworthy content, inbound marketing makes you attractive to strangers. 

The Internet changed it all

The internet has been around for 20 years, but in the last ten years the power in a deal has shifted to the consumer. With the smartphone, consumers can get all the information they need from searching the internet.

Consumers can instantly discover, compare, review, learn, research and seek out opinions about the product or services they are seeking, on their smart device.

54% more leads are generated by inbound tactics than traditional paid marketing.

 

It's now the age of Seller Beware

Salespeople now often know less than the consumer. It's the age of "Seller Beware".

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Goals of a good inbound website

As a HubSpot Diamond Partner and inbound marketing experts, The Kingdom team work hard to build remarkable lead generating websites. A great inbound marketing site will educate the customer while providing them with calls to action. Intrigued strangers become leads by clicking on the calls to action.

Your goal in creating a fantastic inbound marketing site should be to provide total transparency to the person about your business. 

Remember, it's the age of Seller Beware. If you are not completely transparent, then you can face the wrath of social review on the internet, which has destroyed many businesses.

 

The results of inbound marketing can be remarkable

With an inbound marketing philosophy, your web hits will grow and grow. With inbound, leads come to your sales team better qualified. With better qualification comes improved sales close rates, happier customers and salespeople.

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There are three stages to an inbound marketing strategy.
HubSpot Flywheel

Attract

In the attract stage, you seek to attract strangers to your website. This is done by blogging, creating relevant keywords and producing interesting social media. People discover your brand and come to your website to learn more.

Engage

Once on your website, you seek to engage these strangers into prospects using calls to actions, landing pages and forms. These tools gather information about your lead. giving your visitor an offer in exchange for their details. It's important that you make it a win-win for both parties.

When the prospect is ready, you follow up your prospect with more information to assist them with their purchase. You provide as many answers to your customers questions as possible to help your prospect make their choice.

Delight

The delight stage is about providing smart, customised content to your user, adding value to their experience. Your goal is to add value to customers so they become promoters of your brand.

95% of buyers chose a solution provider that “Provided them with ample content to help navigate through each stage of the buying process."
[Source: DemandGen Report]

How do you start inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is easy to start. It's a simply a matter of getting a blog working. By blogging, you can discuss topics that attract strangers to your website. Promote your blog with social media always trying to drive traffic back to your website. Here are 6 easy ways to start inbound.

Some of the benefits of Inbound Marketing

  • Inbound marketing creates marketing qualified leads, easing the burden on your sales team to get new business.

  • Inbound is helpful to your future customer at all times. Customers gain trust with your efforts to educate them and do business with you.

  • Inbound marketing can be automated using the HubSpot platform, making it possible to scale your business lead generation.

 

We help busy marketing professionals build HubSpot websites with continuous improvement to get value and growth from their technology investment. Find out what HubSpot is used for and make a difference to your sales and marketing.

The Kingdom helps businesses build powerful digital marketing tools to get value and growth from their HubSpot investment. Login to the HubSpot CRM then speak to The Kingdom team today.

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