Four stages of an effective Inbound Marketing Strategy
Inbound Marketing has become ever more popular in today’s social media client. This being the case it’s now more important than ever for marketers to understand the best practices to better ensure success in today’s marketplace. The following stages are amongst the most proven to better aid you in your quest to attract and gain more customers.
Attract- Before you can gain a new lead or customer you first must attract their attention. In order to do this effectively you must first be familiar with your audience and their buyer persona. Answer the questions what is their likes, dislikes, interest etc.? Once this is done you can now better employ the tools at your disposal to attract and lead people towards your site. Some of these tools include:
· Social Media — Learn the networks where your target market “hangs out” to focus your marketing efforts there. These avenues of media include (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat) etc.
· Blogging — This an important facet to inbound marketing and a great way to attract visitors to your content. Your blog also allows you to speak as the expert. Every business should have a blog!
· Video Marketing — It’s predicted that by 2017, 74% of content viewed online will be from video; a compelling stat to motivate any business to boost their video strategy.
· Email — With growing Social media platforms such Facebook and LinkedIn it’s easy to overlook email. The truth is email is still as popular as ever and is both an excellent platform to attract new customers as well as delight new ones.
Convert- Once you have attracted new potential customers to your website it’s time to acquire their information and convert them into leads. The best way to do this is by offering an exchange in lieu of their information. Some examples of these offers include e-books, whitepapers, how-to-video, webinar, guidebook etc.
Close- The next stage is to convert your newly acquired lead into sales. The good news is that your leads are qualified and have expressed interest in your company. Moving forward, using tools like your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system can assist you and help you in bringing your lead to making a buying decision.
Here are some tips to help increase your sales conversions
· Use social proof, customer testimonials, case studies and tests findings to illustrate that people are getting results from your product can go a long way. Testimonials are great because they make your product more tangible to the potential buyer. They now have a reason as to why the product may work for them.
· Increase level of personalization through further segregation. Email and messaging efforts should be written in a manner as if you were speaking with a friend. Personalization builds rapport, comfort level with potential leads, and increases their willingness to buy from someone they feel on friendly terms with.
· Mitigate consumer risk by offering money back guarantees and clear and precise purchasing policies. This gives the consumer more confidence to pursue the purchase.
Delight- This is where you create a loyal fan base that is worth its weight in gold. Creating evangelical consumers, you essentially receive a personal testimonial and a great means of free advertising.
Some good practices to follow to better retain and delight customers and better yet turn them into customers who would swear by your product include practices such as:
- Providing surveys to customers to make future buying experiences even better.
- Offer discounts and coupons to loyal customers
- Provide feedback options through your social media platforms lending these customers a voice to help better aid the (future) customer experience.
