Nobody likes receiving cold calls, unsolicited emails, and junk mail. These outdated outbound tactics are like standing on the roof of your business with a megaphone and shouting at people in the street.
In today’s digital world, the only way to cut through the noise is to be there at the right moment with content and messaging your customers find interesting and which really matters to them.
That’s why more and more businesses are turning to inbound marketing.
- 74% of businesses now primarily use inbound marketing.
- 80% of business decision-makers prefer to get information through articles rather than an advertisement.
- 75% of marketers say that inbound is effective, compared to 62% for outbound marketing.
If you’re not already using inbound marketing to drive leads and customers to your business, your competitors most likely are.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a methodology that focuses on attracting customers through content and experiences tailored to their needs and interests. Rather than blasting out a promotional message and interrupting the lives of your potential customers, inbound is focused on building connections and relationships by helping people to solve their problems and achieve their goals.
An inbound marketing strategy is built on knowing what your customer personas want at each stage of the buyer’s journey, creating content and experiences that meet their needs, and progressing them to the next stage.
Benefits of Inbound Marketing
Blasting out promotional mass messaging and hoping you’ll find customers is a tactic from a bygone era. Inbound helps you to build relationships and become a trusted source of information in your industry. When people find you, they’re more likely to listen to what you have to say and purchase your products and services.
Here are the key benefits of inbound marketing:
1. Cost-Effective
One-size-fits-all mass marketing is costly, risky, and less effective in today’s digital landscape. If you opt for an expensive ad campaign, there’s no guarantee it will drive results, and once you stop paying for exposure, the number of leads you generate will dry up.
On average, inbound leads cost 61% less than outbound leads. With a leaner and more targeted inbound strategy, you can consistently attract customers over the long term and save on your marketing costs.
2. Increase Trust and Credibility
When you focus on helping your customers to better understand their problems and goals, you appear much more trustworthy than an annoying cold caller or billboard in the street. Research shows that 70% of people would prefer to learn about a company through content than through advertising. Inbound is about building lasting relationships with customers and leveraging content marketing and social proof to help people overcome barriers to purchase.
3. Higher Quality Traffic and Leads
Inbound marketing brings the right people to your website and your business – the people most likely to buy your products and services. People want to educate themselves do their own research. When you have an effective inbound strategy, you drive leads down the funnel until they are ready to convert and reach out to sales or make a purchase. Inbound leads are 10x more likely to convert than outbound leads.
4. Predictable and Trackable
Rather than a short-term boost in leads from an expensive outbound marketing campaign, inbound builds a sustainable funnel that consistently attracts new customers to your business. You can track prospects as they navigate their way through the buyer’s journey towards making a purchase. As you generate more leads and sales, you’ll start to see patterns and be able to make data-driven improvements to make your inbound tactics more effective.
5. Aligns Sales and Marketing
Inbound marketing empowers sales and marketing by bringing the teams together. Businesses with a strong alignment between sales and marketing are 67% more effective at closing deals and drive 208% more revenue from their marketing initiatives.
Sales can provide marketing with the information they need to create content that answers questions and solves customers’ problems as they move through each stage of the buyer’s journey. When a prospect reaches out to sales, they are ready to make a purchase. Sales teams spend their time closing deals rather than dealing with cold prospects.
Inbound Marketing: In-House vs. Agency
Before you can take advantage of a dynamic inbound marketing strategy, there’s one important question you need to answer.
Should you invest your time and resources creating an in-house inbound marketing team, or should you enlist the help of a specialist agency?
There are pros and cons to both options.
When you create an in-house team, you have complete control of every marketing initiative and can oversee everything from tone of voice to topic selection. Your in-house team will also be entirely dedicated to your company alone.
But there are significant drawbacks to an in-house team and advantages that you can only get by partnering with an agency.
It takes a large team of marketing professionals with diverse skills to create an effective inbound marketing campaign. You’ll need to hire web designers, SEOs, SEMs, copywriters, developers, and project managers. These team members will all need to be hired and trained to use your inbound software.
According to Glassdoor, the average company spends around $4,000 to hire a new employee, with an average of 24 days before each position is filled. When you partner with the right agency, you get instant access to a skilled and experienced inbound marketing team.
Conclusion
Inbound marketing helps you get more qualified leads, more sales, and more business growth by being there when your ideal customers actively look for your products and solutions.
If you’re ready to unleash the power of inbound, contact the inbound marketing experts at Spiralytics to find out how we can grow your sales funnel.
