www.website.com
by alex donovan
The beginner's guide to inbound marketing
About the author
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alex donovan
After completing her double degree in Marketing and International Relations at the University of South Australia, Alex came on as a Copywriter at The Kingdom in 2015. With a HubSpot certification in inbound marketing, Alex is dedicated to helping businesses like yours succeed in a competitive, global market by getting you to stand out from the crowd. A true believer in the power this form of marketing holds, Alex helps you to attract, convert, close and delight your customers through attractive and valuable content.
Table of contents
Introduction......................................................4 What is Inbound Marketing?.........................7 The Benefits......................................................9 The Reasoning Behind Inbound....................12 The Inbound Methodology.............................15 Lead Nurturing and The Sales Funnel..........21 The Customer Experience...............................24 Inbound Website Essentials...........................26 Conclusion.........................................................29
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Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 1: introduction
In the old days of business, the salesperson had all the power. Every piece of information the consumer received came directly from them. Salespeople had absolute control, and the buyer just had to hope that they were giving them the best deal possible. This was how it worked for a very long time - until the Internet came in and changed it all. Suddenly, consumers could do their own research. They could do their own comparisons. Now, the shoppers had all the power.
The average person does 70% of their research online
Currently, the average person does a whopping 70% of their research online before even contacting a salesperson. A far cry from the days of the door-to-door vacuum salesman. Traditional sales use outbound marketing and old advertising methods to try and interrupt people - but the thing is, people don't want to be interrupted anymore. Now, with the fragmentation of media and constant access to technology, your customers have the choice to turn off your annoying advertising. The Internet has killed the age old method of outbound, disruptive selling and marketing. So what do you do? It's time for inbound marketing.
Chapter 2: what is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is the new and improved way of selling. It’s completely different to outbound marketing, which is all about pushing the consumer into a sale. Instead, inbound marketing focuses on enticing your customers through attractive content. It’s all about accepting the new behaviours of buyers, and working with it - not against it. Because the majority of your customers are all online and looking for answers to their questions, inbound marketing focuses on attracting visitors to your website. Once on your site, inbound then converts the customer to a lead, based on the content and structure of your website. With trustworthy content, inbound marketing makes you attractive to strangers, drawing them in on their own time towards a sale, instead of push, push, pushing.
Chapter 3: The Benefits
There are many benefits of utilising an inbound marketing strategy in your business. With an inbound marketing philosophy, your web hits will grow and grow. Leads that are valuable and qualified will come to your sales team. With better qualification comes improved sales close rates, which means happier customers, happier salespeople and more money in your business’ bank. Inbound marketing transforms your website into your number one sales and marketing tool. It works round the clock, and will never stop.
Some other benefits of inbound include: Creating marketing qualified leads, which provides higher quality leads to your sales team. An improved customer experience and relationship with your brand. Customers gain trust with your efforts to educate them and do business with you. It simplifies your marketing efforts. It can be totally automated by using tools like the HubSpot automated marketing platform, and makes it possible to streamline your business lead generation. Automated marketing is an incredibly effective way of nurturing your leads - if you’d like to learn more about it, we’ve got a great article all about it here. Or, if you’d like to see what HubSpot is all about, you can watch their 12 minute overview movie here.
Chapter 4: the reasoning behind inbound
In a time where the consumer has all the power, it’s silly to blindly stumble on with marketing and sales tactics that are no longer effective. That no longer appeal to your audience. In today’s market, the ability to trust a business is huge. Without trust, there will be no sale. Remember, if you’re not giving your consumer what they’re looking for, or you start getting pushy with them - what will they do? They’ll bounce out. They’ll search again. They’ll leave you and find someone else.
Chapter 4: The reasoning behind inbound
Chapter 4: The Reasoning Behind Inbound
Inbound marketing caters to the new behaviours of your buyers. It combines technology, psychology, sales and marketing to build a streamlined and efficient lead generating machine. It also creates an unparalleled customer experience. With this enhanced business efficiency and customer experience, you give your business the competitive advantage you need to push out above the millions of others in your market.
Chapter 5: The Inbound Methodology
Now that you know the logic behind inbound marketing, it’s time to learn how to do it. To start, there’s the Inbound Marketing Methodology. This is what forms the basis of your entire operations. It is centred on four things: Attract. Convert. Close. Delight.
Chapter 5: The inbound methodology
Chapter 5: THe attract stage
The first stage of the methodology is to attract customers to your business' website by answering their questions. You do this by creating enticing content such as blogs and website pages, along with other forms of content marketing, focusing on relevant search engine keywords to improve your organic search.
Chapter 5: the convert stage
The Convert stage is done through strategic Calls-to-Action that lead to landing pages. On these landing pages, you'll provide an educational, valuable offer where the customer can access it in exchange for filling out a form. Once the customer engages with the CTA, they become a lead.
Chapter 5: the close stage
After you have converted your potential customer into a lead, you then move into the Close stage. You nurture your potential customer with additional content that they might be interested in, utilising automated emails and segmented lists to tailor make the offerings, leading them towards a sale. Once they are ready, you close the deal.
Chapter 5: the delight stage
The Delight stage occurs after your leads have become customers. In this stage, you continue to give the consumer value through informative, attractive content and exemplary customer service. You want to provide exceptional service and ongoing information, so your customers become promoters to others and become repeat buyers.
Chapter 6: Lead Nurturing and the Sales Funnel
Chapter 6: Lead nurturing and the Sales Funnel
Inbound marketing revolves around nurturing your consumers through a logical progression of valuable content towards a sale. Lead nurturing allows you to track where the potential customer are in the buying cycle - or as we like to call it, the sales funnel. Your sales funnel is made out of three sections: Top of Funnel (TOFU) Middle of Funnel (MOFU) Bottom of Funnel (BOFU)
To properly nurture your consumers, you need to segment your content based off of its funnel position. TOFU content nurtures consumers towards MOFU, then MOFU towards BOFU. Once they’re at the bottom of your sales funnel, once they’ve obtained that 70% sweet spot of information, then you can close the deal. Bring your consumers down the sales funnel with trust and useful content - such as how you help them, your pricing and how you're different to the others in your market.
Chapter 7: The Customer Experience
A big part of inbound marketing is giving your customers the best experience possible. In today’s day and age, it’s all about giving the customer a good time. To ensure an awesome customer experience, consider the following: Is your website easy to navigate? Is your website friendly for mobile users? Are you providing the answers the customers want? Are you talking too much about you, and not enough about how you can help the customer? How are you giving the customer value? Once you nail these five things, chances are your customer experience will drastically improve.
Chapter 7: The customer experience
Chapter 8: Inbound Website Essentials
Great inbound marketing revolves around an amazing website. To get your website kicking goals for your business, there are a few things that you’ll need to do. A great inbound marketing site will educate your customer while bringing them down the funnel with relevant content offers. Your goal in creating a good inbound marketing site should be to provide total transparency to the person about your business.
Chapter 8: inbound website essentials
Here are a few essentials for your inbound website: Team pages. Your consumers want to deal with people, not a faceless business. It’s essential in building trust. Talk about your price. If it’s too complicated, tell them why. These are the facts your customers are hunting for. What the buying process looks like for your business. Be detailed and informative. Clear and easy website navigation Answers pages to your customers’ questions. The more you have, the better! Tailored content that’s all about how you help the customer - not why you’re so awesome. Logical CTAs on every page leading off to the next relevant page or offer With these on your website, you’re well on your way to having a website that’s your number one sales and marketing asset.
Chapter 9: Conclusion
Inbound marketing is the way of the future. The buying behaviour of your consumers isn’t going to revert - it’ll only steam ahead. New technologies are brought out every day, and businesses need to get with the times. The answer to your problems isn’t to throw your head under the covers and hope it’ll all get better. Neither is stubbornly insisting that the old methods are still effective and relevant to the modern market. Kicking off with inbound marketing is a sure fire way to give your business a competitive advantage.
Chapter 9: conclusion
This eBook has been just a taste of the full potential of inbound. It’s a beginners guide, after all. Inbound marketing is incredibly powerful, but it can be a little overwhelming to break away from the old methods - especially if you’re not sure where to start. If you’d like to know how you can use inbound marketing, we have a free Inbound Marketing Assessment that you can utilise, no strings attached. During this assessment, we’ll fire up a Go-To-Meeting, share screens with you and discuss the changes and improvements you can make to your website. It’s an excellent way to get the ball rolling. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to give us a call or email today. We’d be happy to help you in any way we can.
About The Kingdom
Get in Touch Today: 65 Walkerville Tce, Gilberton Adelaide, South Australia 5081 Phone: +61 8 8232 1125 Email: alex@thekingdom.com.au www.thekingdom.com.au
We have a heap of handy tips, tricks and advice you can use to enhance your business. Here are some that you might be interested in. Digital Vs. Traditional Media What is Lead Nurturing? What is Automated Marketing Software? How Do You Measure ROI on Social Media? How an Inbound marketing Strategy can Make a Beautiful Website The 11 Step Marketing Plan Cheat Sheet 17 Secret Tips to Improve Your Email Marketing The Benefits of Outsourcing Your Digital Marketing 25 Website Must-Haves 17 SEO Myths You Should Leave Behind The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks and Ideas FREE Inbound Marketing Assessment
More information
The Kingdom is an inbound marketing agency that gets dynamic lead generation happening for your business. As a HubSpot Platinum Certified Partner, we provide an outsourced inbound marketing, lead generating service for your needs. We're fast and skilled with the latest technologies, and help you to make a real impact with your business.