What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that draws customer attention towards the products or services through social media marketing, content marketing and search engine optimisation. Unlike outbound marketing where you chase after potential customer, here customer comes after you in the hunt of specific product or service.
Inbound marketing focuses more on attracting customersthrough quality content that adds value to their buying journey. It focuses on creating brand awareness and attracting new businesses. It provides information about the customer, their experience and build trust by offering potential customers information they value via company sponsored newsletters, blogs and entries on social media platforms. Why Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is always effective whether you run small business or you run big business. It works smarter as compared to outbound marketing. It increases website traffic, generate more leads, increases customer loyalty and sale. It pulls in qualified leads already hunting for the answer. Below I have listed few advantages of Inbound marketing:
Advantages Of Inbound Marketing
Limitations of Inbound Marketing
Well there is no surprise that inbound marketing is doing very well with every kind of business whether it is a small or a big one. Since it’s a fact that everything has it’s pros and cons, so inbound marketing too has some cons. But the most disturbing thing about inbound marketing is that it’s advantages are the one that makes it at a disadvantage at other hand. It is little strange and difficult to understand the concept. But I have tried my level best to explain it in a simple language. So let’s see what are its disadvantages:
Steps To Follow For Better Inbound Marketing
Hubspot, which is better known for producing inbound marketing software, has very well defined inbound marketing strategy step by step. I have described it below in short:
Step 1: Attract strangers with your content strategy, ebooks, blogging, social media, whitepapers, newsletters etc. A good content strategy will make stranger to become regular visitor.
Step 2: Convert those visitors into qualified leads. This can be done by initiating conversation with them in whatever way they like-with direct call, message, email, face-to-face meeting etc. Step 3: When you have converted visitors into qualified leads you’re surely on the right path. Now you have to convert those leads into potential customers. This can effectively be done using strategies like- pipeline management, lead nurturing campaign, email marketing and predictive lead scoring. Step 4: The last step to inbound marketing is to delight your customer with a remarkable experience which will force them to say WOW. Delighting your customer means doing something more than their expectation. A delighted customer will always buy from you, will promote your product will always stay with you. Takeaway
Creating content and setting the right strategies will take some time, but in the end it is worth time taking and being a little expensive (for small business). The result produced will help you generate leads and will ramp you up. It’s all up to you how you go on. If you take wrong steps then I bet you the marketing strategy is going to ruin you but if you follow correct steps and be a little patient then inbound marketing is really going to boost up your business.
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âI can understand how much it irritates when advertisement shows up while watching favorite show on television. But sometimes itâs refreshing and fun too to see them. Those advertisements are the part of Outbound Marketing. Unlike Inbound marketing where consumers find you, Outbound marketing is a kind of marketing in which marketer tries to reach audience regardless of their interest and can help you gain an advantage over your B2B competitors.
Outbound marketing can be done through outbound calls, television ads, newspaper, magazine, radio, display ads etc. Because it is interruptive so it is not liked by many. Outbound marketing is very hard to go with and is less profitable when compared to inbound marketing. So if you seek profit in outbound marketing, you really need to follow better strategies and should consult an expert.
Goal Of Outbound Marketing
The goal of outbound marketing is lead generation and to drive interest in the product/service offered by the company. Companies looking for huge audience within a short time period can use outbound marketing because you get in direct contact with your audience in a very short time. It makes essential for the company to gain customers. This is all outbound marketing is used for.
Different Kinds Of Outbound Marketing
There are various kind of outbound marketing. I have tried to list some of them here.
Cold calling/telemarketing:
Outbound calls are made in order to make them aware about the offers and to convince the customer for making purchase. Telemarketing plays an important role in making the customer to take purchase decision.
Email marketing:
This kind of marketing is generally used for the promotion of brand, new product launch, a sale or offer, discounts etc. One of the best part of this kind of marketing is that it doesnât irritate customer like outbound calls made to random strangers at wrong time.
Television commercial ads:
Advertisements are done through both audio and video. Video must be of good quality, entertaining, fun to watch and should show how itâs better than other products/services.
Radio advertisements:
his is audio form of advertising that you usually get to listen on radio or transistors.
Trade shows and exhibitions:
These can be little expensive but if held well, it attracts more customer and force them to leave their contact. Trade shows are better for those who wants to woo more audience at the same time because you are facing number of audience at a particular time.
Display ads:
Advertisements are generally displayed on the websites in the form of text, images, videos, audios, flash etc. These are displayed in newspaper as well.
Newspaper advertising:
This kind of advertising has been found very effective. There are three kinds of ad formats in newspaper namely display ads, classified ads and innovative newspaper ads. Display ads are generally displayed on the front page which attract premium over regular Newspaper advertising card rate. However classified ads are for small businesses and cost less than display ads. Cost of innovative newspaper ads are more than regular advertising ads. For instance-Pointer ads, Ear Panels, samplings and Newspaper Jackets.
Press releases:
These are one or two page document used to call attention to your company and its products/services.
Social media:
This kind of marketing uses social media to promote any product or services. Most social media platforms have built-in data analytics tools, which enable companies to track the progress, success, and engagement of ad campaigns.
âApart from these, some more outbound marketing also involves certain styles of blogging, direct mail and branded marketing. Who Employs Outbound Marketing?
Since outbound marketing is employed to provide customised sales and marketing solutions, so generally industries that deal within hospitality and tourism employs this kind of marketing. Also outbound is employed by the companies that are well settled and established. It is not for the businesses that have just started up. Because for start-ups, outbound may not work well and would be expensive too.
Advantages Of Outbound Marketing
There have always been much negativity about outbound marketing. Many of us think it doesnât work well with business. But in fact, outbound marketing is not that much bad as people see. In the last few years, it has really improved and is surely gaining customers for business. Some of the advantages of outbound marketing are:
Limitations Of Outbound Marketing
What are lead scoring and grading? How are they different? Which one should be used or how to use both of them together? These questions top the trending list nowadays. So what exactly is lead scoring and grading?
As leads are generated for your brand and they start understanding and interacting with your offerings, the next step comes where they want to speak to a member of your sales team. And this is the stage where a sales team representative need to be patient because if he speaks too soon, he may end up wasting time as the lead might not be ready to take a decision and could be the incorrect target. That is how most of the leads undergo stages of becoming, from a regular lead to marketing qualified lead and then finally sales qualified lead. Lead scoring versus lead grading –
First of all, we need to understand that there is a big difference between the two. And most of the companies get confused between two or they actually end up using them incorrectly. So let's get the differences made clear first and foremost.
Lead scoring
The term lead scoring is referred to a process or methodology which is used to rank prospects against a scale that presents the perceived value which each of the lead represents to the organization. Marketing leads are often scored on the basis of particular activities that show the interest in the certain solution. Various lead scoring metrics calculate the average for all activities, which describe the level of interest of a lead and if the level interest meet the required ranking, then that signals to carry on with a prospect. In simple words the higher the score, the more interested a lead is and better fit for sales conversation.
Importance
Lead scoring is a tedious job, so it requires a dedication and efforts for the work and outcomes. According to a report 66% of businesses are unaware of and does not practice lead scoring. And in the B2B world only 21% of the firms have started a lead scoring practice.
The benefits of lead scoring are numerous and substantial. Lead scoring gives you a better view to understand the interest level of a lead and suggests you the right time to speak with the lead in order to persuade them to take action. It aligns the marketing and sales departments, in today's world of the internet where online buying is at its peak. In such a scenario it is important for the sales and marketing teams to work together for achieving the same goals. Hence a proper lead scoring methodology brings sales and marketing team together in order to update and tweak lead scores. Lead grading
Most scoring models get attention from the sales team and marketing leads are scaled according to attributes which define the individual and business associate who has responded to a marketing representative. The ranking system differentiate usually differentiate between leads with the alphabets A,B,C etc and the highest grade attainable is A where the lead is ready to take an action. But at the same time lead grading is not applicable to all of the leads generated. Grading is regulated based on demographic information after understanding the buyer’s profile or target accounts.
Importance
Grading helps in identifying the interested and engaged lead and guides you how to approach the lead in the best you which can guarantee you of transforming the lead into a customer. Grading helps companies to monitor the profile criteria within a prospect record.
Although lead grading is critical but it helps your business grow by delivering result and by helping you in acquiring interested leads and targeting them. Grading saves your time and makes it easy for your business to take an action out of box and be a leader in lead scoring and turning leads into your loved and loyal customers.
B2B (business-to-business) Marketing is a marketing strategy that involves the process of buying and selling of products between two companies or businesses for the production of goods, for general business operations or for resale (for instance- wholesaler selling it to retailer). B2B marketing adds value to the sale. Decisions on price and profit potential are taken alone by the B2B buyers.
B2B marketing is a huge marketing platform that consists of chains of businesses. Suppose you buy a chocolate. Have you ever thought how it come to you? It didn’t come directly into the shop. A chain of process is involved in it. First of all the company manufacturing/producing chocolates buy ingredients like cocoa seeds, sugar etc from some other seller. After chocolates are processes, they are distributed to wholesalers. Wholesaler sales those chocolates to shopkeepers and shopkeepers sales that to you. This is how B2B marketing works. You can see how marketing is going between different businesses. How To Develop And Employ B2B Marketing Plan?
B2B marketing is completely different from consumer marketing, something that you see and observe in your everyday life. It is very much different from the one you see as an advertisement on television, in newspaper, on internet etc. B2B marketing cannot be branded this way. They need to brand through emails, content marketing, social media, webinars, and corporate images and through some other ways.
These are the following ways in which B2B marketing can be developed and employ their B2B plan:
Hence whatever marketing plan you have, execute it in a right direction otherwise no matter how good your plans are, it will lead to failure if you aren’t in a right direction. B2B Marketing Strategies
You need to have a well-planned strategy if you want to grow your business. Here are some marketing strategies that will help you overcome challenges you will face during marketing.
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