According to HubSpot, “54% more leads are generated by inbound tactics than traditional paid marketing” and these “inbound leads cost 66% less than outbound leads.” By creating and sharing content that’s designed to bring value to your ideal customers, inbound marketing can help you attract prospects and keep them coming back for more.
HubSpot has been holding a Grow with HubSpot event around the world lately and last week they were here in Toronto. At the event, HubSpot talked about the hot topic of inbound marketing and how marketers can use inbound marketing to help their business achieve remarkable growth.
Here are some of our key takeaways from the event:
Talk about what your customers care about
When sharing content with prospects and customers, it is important to talk about what your customers care about. Don’t just talk about yourself, the company, and what you offer. Your audience should definitely get to know what you are all about but at the right time. With inbound marketing, you offer value to your prospects and customers so that they come to you.
Try to find out what your customers’ challenges are and create content to help them overcome those challenges. And create different types of content, like blog posts, ebooks, webinars, podcasts, etc. What you want is to add value and be helpful.
Make sure to convert
Creating and sharing great content is not all, you need to convert the people that view your content. If you get someone to visit your website, for instance, make sure you show them an offer where they for instance need to give you their email address to access the offer.
Getting information and permission to send emails to prospects and customers can be quite beneficial. As HubSpot mentioned, “59% of B2B marketers say email is the most effective channel for generating revenue,” so offering great value in exchange for someone’s email address is a good idea.
Be clear
Be clear in your communication with prospects and customers. Have clear calls to action so that they know exactly what to do. Also, make sure you are clear about what you offer, even in the headline of a blog post. Don’t use too many buzzwords, try to say things in the same way as your customers would search for it. This way, they will understand you better, and you will most likely get more hits on search engines as well. And if you have something relevant to offer, don’t rely on someone to complete reading a blog post before showing it to them. You can, for instance, mention it inside the blog post or show the offer on a sidebar.
Nurture your leads
Your leads need to be nurtured. You want to take them through your funnel, but in a time that they are comfortable with. For instance, if they download an ebook, they might not be ready to be sold to yet. So maybe you send them an email a day later and then another one 3 days after that, only offering other relevant content based on their previous actions. Depending on their actions with the emails, you can evaluate whether they need more time to get to know you or if it’s time to hand them over to the sales team.
Making sure the emails are relevant to each lead is important, though. According to HubSpot, “relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails.” Also, HubSpot says “marketers see an average increase of 20% in sales when using personalized web experiences,” so when showing an offer to someone on your website, for instance, make sure it is relevant with respect to why they went to your website in the first place.
Inbound marketing can be highly beneficial if done correctly. Creating and sharing valuable content with your prospects and customers can be a win-win situation for both of you. Just make sure you offer great value, convert the leads you get, be clear in your communication and nurture those leads in a personalized manner.