Founder & CEO at Millennial Services, a dedicated call-center services provider.
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As companies look for more ways to acquire and retain customers, it is essential to have the proper methodologies in place to ensure customer success. Inbound marketing can be a key part of this process. It can help companies build relationships with their audiences, attract new customers and keep existing customers.
In fact, a well-planned and carefully executed inbound strategy kept my business from shutting down years ago when our largest customer was acquired, and the new owner ended our service contract. A solid inbound plan can be a great hedge against market uncertainty and conditions for all businesses.
Now, my company’s most visited pages and articles tend to be about customer care and building better relationships and experiences. Business leaders want to know how to take better care of customers. With that goal in mind, here are five inbound marketing methodologies to consider.
1. Content Marketing
Through content marketing, businesses can provide customers with valuable information, establish trust and create a connection with them. This connection can lead to more sales, as customers often purchase from the brands they trust.
Consider: What questions are customers asking? Check your phone logs. Take the problems that keep coming up, and write about how your customer can best solve them. You can be sure the questions you hear on the phone are being asked to search engines every day as well. The point isn’t to write blogs. The point is to help people do business more efficiently and affordably. By helping customers get there, you establish yourself as a reputable brand in your vertical.
Present your content in various formats, including blog posts, videos, infographics, e-books and webinars. Distribute it through multiple channels, such as social media, newsletters and email campaigns. The goal is to provide valuable information to engage prospective customers and encourage them to act.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO involves increasing a website’s visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs). This is possible through various techniques such as keyword research, link building, content optimization and technical optimization. SEO can increase the chances of potential customers finding and visiting the website, which could lead to more sales and customer success. Some of the additional benefits include the following.
• Improved brand awareness: This is essential for customer success as it helps businesses to build trust and credibility with potential customers.
• Targeted traffic: SEO allows businesses to target potential customers based on their search terms.
• Cost-effective strategy: SEO is a cost-effective method of marketing as businesses do not have to pay for advertising.
Search engines look for relevant, authoritative content, so write about what’s important to the reader. Use the keyword or search phrase they use in the title, first paragraph and a few more places.
3. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing includes creating content and engaging with customers on social media platforms. Aim to use these platforms to build customer relationships, increase brand awareness and promote customer loyalty.
Social media marketing is an effective way to reach many potential customers and is inexpensive when compared with more traditional marketing methods. You can also uncover valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences, which are ideal for tailoring future marketing strategies.
To reap the social media marketing benefits, develop a solid strategy. This means creating engaging content, using analytics to gain insights into customer behavior and engaging with customers regularly. Make sure to develop campaigns tailored to your target customer’s needs and preferences.
4. Automation
By using technology to automate manual processes, you could become faster, more efficient and more accurate. Automation applies to virtually any business process, from marketing and sales to customer service and operations.
For example, you can automate processes related to customer service, such as responding to customer inquiries, tracking customer feedback and providing customer support. Automation can also streamline marketing processes, such as segmenting customers, developing targeted campaigns and measuring the effectiveness of campaigns. It’s also a great tool for generating insights and analytics to better understand customer behavior and preferences.
I’ve noticed customers are very good at detecting when your organization has an internal communication problem. Through the use of communication platforms and CRMs, your customer support staff and other members of your team (sales, finance) can precisely communicate and track the progress of issues and provide transparency between business arms that ensure no one gets missed and customers are well cared for. In addition, you can build automation around tagging certain cases, querying those case types, and using the information to better your organization at the macro level. In one use case, we were able to use this strategy to decrease refunds by 75%.
5. Analytics
By gathering and analyzing data, you can better understand customer behavior and preferences, as well as trends and opportunities for improvement. Businesses can use several types of analytics to gain insights into their customers. These include the following.
• Descriptive analytics involves analyzing past customer data to identify patterns and trends.
• Predictive analytics use data to predict future customer behavior and preferences.
• Prescriptive analytics use data to recommend actions businesses can take to improve customer satisfaction and increase revenue.
• Social media analytics involves analyzing data from social media platforms to identify customer interests and preferences.
If your business is looking to use analytics to improve customer success, there are several steps to follow. First, define your goals and objectives before you begin your analytics journey. Next, identify the data you need to achieve your goals. Once you have identified the necessary data, you can begin collecting and analyzing it to uncover insights. The results after analysis will guide you in taking action to improve customer satisfaction.
Customer success relies on the proper implementation of inbound methodologies. It is essential to have a logical strategy in place for each methodology and ensure that it has been optimized for success. By understanding the basics of inbound marketing, you can create a comprehensive plan and benefit your customer base.
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Small businesses on Cape Cod and the Islands have two methods for driving awareness and thus sales – inbound and outbound marketing.
Outbound marketing includes digital and print newspaper ads, TV ads, billboards, cold calling, and display ads in local magazines like Cape Cod Life or Cape & Plymouth Business media, while inbound relies on slow-burn content marketing, such as blogs, opt-in email nurture flows and native recommendations. Inbound marketing is a unified strategy for generating traffic, converting leads and analyzing marketing initiatives. It is the opposite of flooding potential buyers with advertising, post cards and email messaging.
If you are truly going to understand the concept of inbound marketing, you need to recall the buying continuum approach to building awareness: Unawareness to Awareness to Understanding to Believability to Trust then Trial/Purchase and Repurchase and/or Referral.
The entire process begins with original content that drives potential buyers to Google the business and ultimately to your website. It is a unified strategy that combines the various marketing tactics in the communications toolbox to raise awareness and understanding of your offer – your products/services/brand. When the content has appropriate call-to-action options, then there is the ability to convert those potential visitors to viewers to buyers.
Inbound marketing strategy has five ordered segments: Owned and Earned Media, Landing Pages, Lead Nurturing, Sales Interaction and Client Retention.
In marketing we look at the sales funnel – the number of leads it takes to close one sale. When looking at inbound marketing we can also consider a funnel as a way of organizing our work. SmartInsights looks at three stages of the funnel – TOFU, MOFU and BOFU – top, middle and bottom of the funnel. TOFU generates leads, MOFU generates prospects and BOFU generates closed sales. For the first stage TOFU, the relevant content earns permission to sell. Content is the conversation starter that drives readers to your website – your front door.
In the MOFU stage, we publish and promote original content and allow sharing so others with like interest can take advantage of the postings. We measure this stage with fans, followers, visitors and inbound links. This stage also forms the foundation for decision-making. Your content is worth finding. The original or curated content you post is relevant, inspirational, useful and problem-solving. Metrics are leads and shares.
The BOFU stage is where the purchases are consummated. This is where the conversion from leads to customers takes place and is measured by orders, revenue and average order value. Once the exchange passes through the BOFU stage advocacy is the focus for repeat purchase and referral.
Grass Roots Marketing, Inc. has studied the impact of inbound marketing activities. The firm has found that (1) companies that blog have 97% more links to their websites. (2) 46% of daily searches are for products or services. (3) 72% of business owners/executives said social media helps with closing business deals. (4) 74% of US adults prefer email marketing for commercial communications. The key is to generate website traffic that features your solution(s) to their problems with a call-to-action so they can continue the conversation moving them through the buying continuum.
If inbound marketing is in your plan to achieve 2023 sales objectives then consider Guido Bartolacci’s advice. Standardize. Make your story consistent across all platforms that you are using for inbound and outbound marketing.
Relevancy. Although you want standardization and consistency, the story needs to resonate with the right people in the right space. Each different segment of the customer base has different pain points and therefore varying pain gains being offered.
Optimize. As the inbound marketing activity increases, additional data is learned about each target customer, and you should tailor your messaging and channels to meet the specific needs, wants and desires of each customer segment.
Personalize. Make each and every target customer feel special. There are estimates that almost everyone is exposed to 1,500-2,000 marketing messages per day. In order to not be ignored your messaging needs to be personalized so they feel the message is directed to them alone.
Empathize. To avoid being blinded by data, show you understand your target customers’ challenges and they aren’t alone in facing those challenges. When an emotional connection is made, the interchange ceases to be transactional and moves to relational.
The goal is generating inbound leads that consummate in closed sales, build revenues and profits and thus sustainability of the enterprise. Bartolacci reminds us, “remember, standardization is important for scalability of your marketing team. Optimizing your strategy takes time and experimentation. Gathering enough information about your buyers to personalize and contextualize your content effectively involves a level of trial and error, as well.”
Contributed by Marc L. Goldberg, Certified Mentor, SCORE Cape Cod & the Islands. 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 on Cape Cod Times: Inbound marketing is a unified strategy for generating traffic
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