why we use inbound at targetbound

WHY WE CHOOSEINBOUND MARKETING

- CASE STUDY -

Table of Contents

Introduction

"Who uses inbound marketing?"

"What's special and different about inbound marketing?"

"How well does inbound marketing perform in the realworld?"

"I'm already doing SEO, Email Marketing or somethingelse. Why do I need inbound?"

"Can I see an actionable inbound strategy example?"

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Introduction


It's a commonly accepted notion in marketing circles that the phrase "Build it and they will come" nolonger holds true. There's just too much competition.

The crowd of entrepreneurs who want a piece of the action in their industry keeps getting bigger andcompanies that don't make an effort to promote themselves end up getting lost in the clutter.

As a marketer, I've always valued two things above all else: being more convincing than mycompetition and working with companies that sell or provide something of value to their audience. Thisway, everybody wins:

People enjoy their new product and the business in question enjoys the positive reaction it deserves.So yes, I believe that all good businesses need marketing. The thing is, not all marketing works. Sometimes, even a lot of times, marketers fall short of reaching a satisfying ROI.

So who's making the most of their marketing and what are they doing to be successful? That's what Ihope to highlight in the contents of this case study. Bare with me, and let's start with...


Who uses inbound marketing?


Hubspot released its annual "State Of Inbound"report for 2015, where they've gathered intel fromthousands of marketing agencies across the globeto see how the industry's been evolving. According to their report, every type of business,whether its B2B, B2C or Non-Profit, believes morein the potential of inbound marketing than theydo outbound marketing. The report states:

"Of the nearly 4,000 people wesurveyed, inbound had a 75% likelihood of beingthe marketing approach of choice. This 3:1 ratioremained consistent across all company types(B2B, B2C, and nonprofit)."

What does this mean? It means that trial and measurement showed agencies all across the globethat inbound marketing simply holds a better success rate than outbound. Now I'm sure you'llwant to know:


What's special and different about

inbound marketing?


Where traditional and outbound marketing is all about pushing your product to as many people aspossible, inbound marketing is more about targeting the right people with the right message.

Next, it's about leading visitors through every step of the client journey until they're comfortable andtrust you enough to buy your product.

Good inbound marketers don't just promote your content - they optimize it for conversion rates, theytrack how well your campaign is performing and improve it frequently in order to improve your successin a consistent, progressive manner.

If outbound is a one-way monologue told by the business to its prospects, inbound is more of aconversation. A more personal approach designed to remove your prospects' trust issues, hesitation,and guide them on their way to making a purchase.



Take, for example, the following graph showing common reasons that lead to people abandoning theircart:

Inbound marketing is meant to attract the right audience to your web site as well as address thedifferent issues that lower your sales conversions. But that's just theory. So let's look at:


How well does inbound marketing

perform in the real world?


That's how well. As another extract from the "State of Inbound" report shows, inbound marketing isfound to be considerably more effective than outbound - and that doesn't only apply to SMBs. As thefollowing graph suggests, companies see better ROI with inbound, no matter how big their pockets are:



An increasing number of major corporations embrace content & inbound marketing as a central part oftheir promotion strategy. Nearly 4 years ago, Coca Cola made a colossal shift from outbound to contentmarketing - they now spend more money creating content than they do on television advertising.



Now I know your time is precious, so to keep things informative but short, I'll show you a few industrystats that look at how companies today value content marketing (which stands at the core of inbound)and how it influences buyer decisions:

Red Bull employs roughly 135 peoplefor its content marketing and mediastrategy;

9 out of 10 organizations currentlymarket with content;

61% of consumers are more likely tobuy from a brand that shares customcontent;

B2B companies find a 67% increasein in leads per month when theycreate content.

Those statistics are some of my favorite takeaways from ExpertWriters' infographic on content budgetplacement, which you can view in full here.

Most companies do try one marketing strategy or another to try and boost their visibility online, so let'sexamine the following situation:

https://expresswriters.com/the-big-content-spend-how-where-are-brands-placing-their-content-budgets-infographic/


I'm already doing SEO, email marketing or

something else. Why do I need inbound?


Simply put, inbound methodology is built to usethe best of each marketing channel and makethem work together to improve results allaround. Specifically:

We use SEO, content, social media (and othertactics) as a tool to attract qualified visitors toyour site. However, visitors don't alwaystranslate into clients.

So we use optimal landing pages to help convertmore of those visitors into leads.

We then use e-mail campaigns, social media,webinars (and so on) to create rapport andestablish a relationship between your brand andthose leads.

Finally, at the end of their client journey, some ofthose leads will become customers. Just howmany of them get that far, depends on how welleach of the layers in your sales funnel has beenset up.



The problem with a lot of companies is that they skip one or even more of the steps in a client journeyaltogether. And ultimately, that correlates with lower conversion rates and lower ROI.

The fact that we implement various forms of marketing doesn't necessarily mean we deal with X timesthe workload either.

We keep things manageable because we focus & optimize the most effective strategies on each channel,and tie them together in a way that allows them to complement each other.

A lot of serious inbound marketers choose Hubspot's software to manage their campaigns, and for goodreason! Just look at their list of 200+ major success stories, which customers achieved using theirmarketing management software. Here's a small number of extracts (or you can view the full list here):

Relevance publishing company uses Hubspot marketing software to increase sales opportunities 5times;Fonality grows its customer base 135% while enjoying a 3x increase in traffic;Lucid Meetings increases website traffic 7.6X in 6 months.

http://www.hubspot.com/customers


Let's take a practical example that shows how you canapply inbound to further increase your leads and sales:


Let's say you're interested in selling nutritionalproducts to people looking to adopt a healthierlifestyle.

Your obvious demographic is people interested inbuying nutritional products.But that alone is a heavily competitive niche andwe'd be missing out on a lot of opportunities.How?

Well, if we dig deeper into this target audienceand ask ourselves a few simple questions, we'llshortly start to uncover a significant number ofnew and less competitive opportunities.

For instance, we might ask: How do people get toa point where they decide they want to buynutritional products?

A bit of research will show us that a lot ofnutritional products are bought by peoplealready involved in fitness and people who wantto lose weight.

But when something first crosses our mind, weoften look for the quickest, simplest solution - away to dip our toes into the water before we divein.

If I were in my prospect's shoes and, for instance,saw a link to an article about how a 5 minutedaily workout yields visible results over time,that would be an easy and free place for me, as aprospect, to start.

Here's how the client journey might look in thiscase (in its most basic form):



Step 1: Attracting our prospects

- We could create a content piece that targets people interested in developing simple, healthy habits.Let's say for example, an article about the benefits of a 5 minute daily workout.

This is interesting to people who don't have a lot of time and simply want to try and live a littlehealthier, so that's the demographic we'd use to promote this content.

Step 2: Converting readers into leads

- If they've read your article, it means they're interested in your content, which qualifies them for thenext step. So at the end of the article mentioned in Step 1, we could offer them (for example) a monthlyschedule of what they have to do each day for 5 minutes.

It's easy for us to create and provides value to our prospect because it will help them stay on track andtake their challenge seriously.

- In order to send them that article, we'll ask for their email address (or to complete a simple form),send the plan to their inbox and voilà! We have their contact information.



Step 3: Closing the deal

- When they're in the lead stage, we can reach out to them with a personalized message, congratulatethem for taking the next step and move them down the sales funnel - depending on your goals andbusiness model, this can mean a number of different things, but for the purpose of this example, we'lljust keep things simple.

Let's say we want to take them straight to a landing page with a product offer that will help themmultiply the results of their monthly goals X times.

- The great thing is, we can use this landing page for your main demographic as well (the people whoare directly interested in buying nutritional products).

So we've expanded our reach and accomplished something very important: we've started building adatabase of loyal leads who already trust you (because you've given them a number of valuable itemsthat they wanted), who already know your brand and who are comfortable to receive an e-mail fromyou because they agreed to it in advance.

- Loyal leads are great because their lifetime value increases as they keep coming back to get yourcontent and your products; they trust you, which makes them less likely to hesitate from buying abigger package and they may just recommend you to their friends as well.



Step 4: Delighting our new customer

- Once you have a new customer, it's important to continue solidifying your relationship with themthrough occasional newsletters, offers, follow-up emails, thank you pages etc. This helps to prolongtheir lifetime value, overall satisfaction and likelihood of recommending your services.

This is just one short and highly simplified example of how we look closely at our target demographic inorder to create the most effective and complete campaigns for our clients. And this is why inboundmarketing is our instrument of choice, every time.

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