Why Inbound Marketing Companies Get Outrageous Success (Pt 1)

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on 6/22/16 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehension.

This is the first blog in a series of articles covering inbound marketing for motivational speakers and authors.

Catch the series here:

Inbound Marketing Companies Get Outrageous Success -- Here's Why (Part 1)

Inbound Marketing Services That Drive Revenue (Part 2)

How to Align Your Marketing Strategies to Your Buyers (for speakers) (Part 3)

Inbound Marketing Series: How to Start a Blog – for Professional Speakers (Part 4)

What Is SEO Marketing? (Part 5)

Why Your Inbound Marketing Strategy Should Include Social Media (For Speakers) (Part 6) 

Best Email Strategy to Power Your Inbound Marketing (Part 7)

How to Solve Your Biggest Sales Problems and Revenue Shortages (Finale)

You know you need marketing, but as a small- to medium-sized business owner, you probably know a lot more about building a successful business, motivating your team, and creating great products or services.

Marketing savvy is necessary – but who has time to get educated?

There’s another problem.

You could be doing a lot of marketing, but if it’s not the right marketing, you’re wasting your money and efforts.

Inbound marketing companies are outrageously successful.

Here’s a quick rundown of how much better they’re faring than you are:

• After 5 months of consistent inbound marketing, the average cost per lead drops 80%.
• Nurtured leads will purchase 47 percent more than leads that aren’t nurtured.
• Correctly carried out, inbound marketing tactics are 10xs more effective for lead conversion compared to outbound methods.
• Inbound marketing generates 54 percent more leads than non-inbound strategies.
• Over 81 percent of shoppers using digital methods reported they were likely to make an additional buy because of receiving targeted emails.
• Publishing 15 blogs per month converts an average of 1,200 new leads per month.

If your business needs an influx of results-oriented marketing, inbound can get you there.

What Your Marketing Probably Looks Like

Billboard advertising. Radio spots. Direct mail ads. Your website.

These are all effective pieces of the marketing puzzle.

But to get traffic and leads, you need a strategic plan.

You see, marketing can’t operate in a silo.

The pieces need to all fit together to create the final masterpiece: REVENUE.

Inbound Marketing Companies Flip The Switch

In the past, successful marketing strategies consisted of trying to find customers and get consumer awareness.

These efforts were focused on the mission of representing your brand.

You engaged customers through demographics and mass advertising.

Your tactics included using a few channels that were isolated from each other and blasting one-point-in-time ads.

Today’s marketing, however, is vastly different. The mission is to:

• Represent the customer and his needs.
• Get found by these customers.

Engagement involves:

• Behavioral marketing.
• One-to-one targeting.

The tactics you use include:

• Developing continuous relationships.
• Integrating marketing channels.

Becoming a company that does inbound marketing shifts your focus away from old tactics to steadily engage in new strategies that drive revenue.

Inbound In Action

Inbound uses marketing tactics to get customers to notice you.

You will no longer have to break out the Mixed Martial Arts tactics to chase down customers.

When customers are in the early buying stages of the decision-making process, they’ll learn about your business, how you can solve their problems, why you’re the business to turn to when they’re ready to buy.

Here are some of the channels you’ll use in an inbound marketing campaign:

• SEO
• Blogging
• Social Media
• Lead generation
• Growth-driven web design
• Email

Now, take a look at how all of these inbound puzzle pieces fit together to create a revenue-driving marketing machine:

• Attracting. During this phase, you build awareness about your brand and help brand-strangers learn about what you do. These tactics, social media and growth-driven web design, for example, grow brand awareness, expose new audiences to your business and drive traffic to your website.
• Converting. Now that you’re getting visitors to your website, you can start “converting” them into leads. By creating lead-generating content, such as a free webinar or ebook, you’ll get these visitors to give their personal contact information to you so you can conduct future marketing campaigns.
• Closing. With a fresh batch of leads, you’ll guide them through an email autoresponder series, for example, to get them to buy. You can segment your email contacts to deliver value-based content to the right people at the right time – and when they’re ready to buy.
• Delighting. Creating a customer base that drives revenue is the first goal. But now that you have customers, you’ll want to nurture these relationships so that your customers turn into brand evangelists – promoting your products and services across the internet.

Final Thoughts

See how these pieces all play a different yet key role towards the goal of getting traffic, turning traffic into leads, getting leads to buy, and using customers to promote your brand?

It’s not a hodge-podge of hit-or-miss tactics.

Inbound is strategic.

It’s insightful.

It’s responsive.

And it drives revenue.

Plain and simple – but highly effective, and it’s less costly than traditional marketing. Are you ready to shave off 62 percent of your marketing costs?

That’s how much companies save by ditching the old, invasive tactics and implementing a strategic inbound marketing strategy.