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Ready to take on inbound marketing? If you’ve done your research, you know that it’s quickly become the best hope your business has for marketing itself in the digital age.
However, it won’t produce results overnight. Instead, you have to know the fundamentals. Master these and you’ll be on your way to seeing bigger profits thanks to inbound marketing.
Education
Inbound marketing is a complete separation from the old way of doing things. This means everyone on your marketing team needs to understand what inbound marketing is and how it differs from the outdated methodology you used to use.
Fortunately, companies like HubSpot make this fairly easy. They actually have training programs to help introduce you to the world of inbound marketing.
Make sure you include your sales team on this too. Inbound marketing isn’t just about advertising; it’s also about nurturing prospects into buyers.
Content
Everyone knows the saying that content is king. This still holds true, but inbound marketing changes this a bit. You’re no longer going to be writing sales letters or creating ads that are the equivalent of one.
Instead, you’ll need content that attracts prospective customers by promising something in return for their attention. You have to give them information that will help make their lives easier. Within this copy, you can pitch your products or services, but not if you don’t truly offer them something at the same time.
Really make content a priority too. Just about every company out there is learning of its importance, meaning if you want to capture the market’s attention, you’ll need amazing content. Boilerplate articles stuffed with SEO keywords won’t do it anymore.
Socialize
No matter what industry you’re business is in, it’s time to take to social media. Inbound marketing and social media go hand-in-hand, so if you don’t have accounts with Facebook and Twitter, you’ll never reach the full potential of what this type of marketing has to offer.
Interaction is a huge part of inbound marketing and social media makes it easier than ever before. Stick with your platforms long enough and they’ll also give you a ton of useful insights into your market.
A word about social media, though: don’t put any one person in charge. At the very least, you want to have one other person checking messages before they go public. Otherwise, you’ll curse the day you ever set up an account.
Start Investing in Software
Wherever the market goes, it’s always a safe bet that software developers will be close behind. This definitely holds true for inbound marketing. You can’t expect to capture your market without some help from the digital world.
CRM has long been important to a proper sales funnel. However, you should also look at software that will help with analytics and reporting. The more information you can gather about your prospects, the better. This is especially true when you consider how it could help you write better content.
Nail the Call to Action
The call to action is one carryover from the old way of doing things that is still solid. Invest whatever you have to into getting this part of your sales funnel correct. While inbound marketing is far more cost effective than its predecessor, that doesn’t mean it still isn’t hard work. You don’t want to put all this effort into attracting prospects, offering them free information and services to turn them into leads and then drop the ball because your CTA lacks.
Calls to action can be deceptive in their simplicity. Take the time to master this necessary component of your pitch and the rest will be worth it.
While inbound marketing is the future, there’s plenty you can do with it in the present. You just need to master the above fundamentals first to ensure you’re getting the best results possible.
