Inbound marketing (Inbound Marketing) is relatively simple. It attracts customers who are already looking for what you have.
Well done, you can see more potential customers or customers entering your business, and the money you spend on offline advertising is only a fraction of what you spend on offline advertising. Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?
But it won’t happen overnight. And these results are not guaranteed. To truly successfully implement inbound marketing in your business, you need to understand how these strategies should reflect the way your customers have behaved.
This is where it started.
- How does the buyer’s journey work?
- Inbound marketing and outbound marketing
- How does inbound marketing work
How does the buyer’s journey work?
There was no Internet a hundred years ago. No TV. I don’t have a radio. Some newspapers. Each town has one or two big ones. okay.
Fast forward, the same trend appeared in the early days of television and radio. There were several channels at first. But not much.
As a result, consumers are largely in the dark. They are unable to carry out fact-checking. They chose only one of the few options and got information from any company that decided to tell them.
The world looks a little different today. They have thousands of UHF channels instead of 10. They have tens of thousands of terrestrial radio channels instead of one or two. Not two town newspapers, but millions of blogs.
Consumers are no longer in the dark. They no longer need the company to tell them what to buy or believe. They are no longer forced to feed a pile of nonsense.
The buyer is now under control.
They are actively studying what they want. All of this doesn’t have to talk to one person-until they’re ready. Until then? They are almost as knowledgeable as salespeople.
Consider buying a car. In the past, you relied on high-handed strategies to get “good deals”. Today? You just need to show up with the exact value of Kelly Blue Book and accept more.
This also plays a role in the biggest purchases.
In its 2018 B2B buyer survey, the demand generation report describes how savvy companies evaluate purchases worth more than hundreds of millions of dollars:
- Compared with last year, 45% of buyers spend more time researching purchases.
- Forty-six percent determine which solutions are most suitable for their existing partners in the first three months.
- 38% also made an informal list of potential suppliers in the first three months.
What does that tell you?
It tells you that the smartest customers spend even more time and resources than they did a year ago-not less. This is the exponential growth of more than a decade ago.
Length of B2B purchasing cycle (photo source: B2B purchaser survey report)
The buyer’s Journey covers the whole stage of consumer research. From the initial awareness of needs, to the evaluation of alternatives, to the company that finally decided to move on.
People today don’t hear about a new brand on the radio or in newspapers and buy it immediately. Instead, they will jump around multiple channels or devices at least a dozen times before showing up in your store or visiting your website.
People not only sign up for a new hosting service provider, but also have a complete journey. They may look at more than 10 of our competitors before considering making a decision.
The following is the buyer’s journey in the minds of consumers.
Buyer’s journey
At first, buyers don’t really know what they want or need. That’s why you still need to display ads or social updates to catch their attention.
Only when they understand that they have a problem will they begin to study the information. Once they have acquired the land, they will enter the evaluation period to stack their choices, and then eventually trigger the metaphorical trigger.
Google calls this “active research” phase zero real time (ZMOT). It contains all of these activities before someone picks up the phone or enters your site URL in the address bar.
Zero critical moment (ZMOT) picture source: Google
I know Marcus. He is the fictional and realistic hero of this section. The way he buys a simple book mimics how your customers are doing research now to make you stand out from the competition.
Desktop search path (image source: Think with Google)
Sixteen different interactions with Amazon. Two Google searches (one location, one brand). Seven interactions with affiliated websites based on coupons. Finally, before you buy five other items in your store.
It sounds like a lot of things because it is.
If you stack it up through marketing channels, this is what the same journey looks like.
Marketing channel purchase decision
You socialize and show from the very beginning. General search has become natural search and paid search. Then, before someone buys it directly, you will receive an email recommendation.
a long and minute statement?
Inbound marketing is not a fashion, trend or concept. This is a necessity today because it reflects the way consumers behave. This means that you need to show up at each of these locations-otherwise, sales will flow to others.
More than a decade ago, Seth Godin called it pertinently. His license marketing is at least a decade earlier than “inbound marketing”. It requires us to move from a historically broadcast-based world that interferes with people to customers finding your new world (not the other way around).
Inbound marketing and outbound marketing
The “inbound” in inbound marketing refers to how the company responds to this huge change in the behavior of new customers.
The point is, when they are bouncing on the buyer’s journey, you try to “pull” them into your sphere of influence.
Compare this with the outbound-based approach of the past few years, where the focus is to “push” your message to many random people, hoping to resonate with a few.
Many years ago, it was “good enough” to send spam to people and call them. Today, it’s not. It’s not because these strategies are inherently bad. But because they no longer work as effectively as they used to (read: for every dollar of income spent).
Inbound marketing and outbound marketing (photo source: WordStream)
People often make “inbound and outbound marketing” sound like some philosophical debate. But at its core, this is not the case.
Convert more potential customers at less cost than outbound
Marketing teams and marketing funds are shifting from cold phone calls to paid search or content marketing because these marketing results are better.
For example, according to the latest report from HubSpot, only 18% of marketers find the best clues through outbound activities.
Why is it so low? What do people use to find success?
Another 79% of marketers regard channels such as e-mail as the most effective demand mining channels.
The logic is simple:
Compared with outbound cues, the cost of inbound cues is lower and the conversion rate is higher.
Inbound and outbound clues (photo source: Invesp)
First of all, the entry threshold of digital channels for small and medium-sized enterprises is low. The initial budget for TV commercials? Don’t even ask. But you can start using AdWords for a few hundred dollars.
Second, intention-based marketing will naturally perform better because it is aimed at people who are already interested in the product you are selling.
Online, the conversion rate of AdWords is usually higher than that of social channels. Why? Because if someone enters “red Nike men’s running shoes”, they are likely to be interested in buying red Nike men’s running shoes.
This laser-like focus does not exist anywhere else.
Selling your timeshare to overworked middle managers who haven’t taken a vacation for five years won’t work. Because they haven’t taken a vacation for five years.
But sell timeshare to people searching for “Kaanapali, Maui seaside timeshare”? You are doing something now.
Inbound may take longer than outbound to begin to produce results
Unfortunately, the “entry and exit” debate is not all about sunshine and rainbows.
Yes, your inbound marketing campaign should produce more results at less cost than outbound.
However, it is also a challenge: “timely”.
Outbound methods may be losing their cost-effectiveness. But they are usually still the best way to turn passive people into customers next week or next month.
In contrast, inbound activities may take longer to add and replace the same transaction process.
NeilPatel has built several blogs with millions of visitors over the past few years, from Crazy Egg to Quick Sprout, Kissmetrics and NeilPatel.com.
He said it would take two years to start seeing significant results.
You can shorten it through advertising and redirection. But it will still take some time to transition from relying on a number of interrupt-based activities to a more targeted approach, giving priority to fewer but better potential customers.
But that’s not the only difference.
Inbound requires a collaboration team. No need for outbound
Outbound strategies often work in a vacuum. Picture cold phone. How does this affect the transformation you see in TV commercials? They didn’t.
Two very independent and different activities. You can let completely different people (or companies) run both at the same time, never talk, and still see good results.
You can’t say the same thing about inbound policies. One of the elements, such as content quality, affects performance in everything from SEO to CRO to advertising.
In other words, by improving the quality of content, you can also improve performance in every other area.
This means that your personal strategy needs to work together. This means that your people, teams, partners, and departments need to do the same.
Mike Volpe, a former vice president of marketing at HubSpot, recommends hiring through the funnel phase. Although there may be only one person to do all the work at first, as you grow up, you should not add team members by channel, but by goal:
Inbound teams by size (photo source: HubSpot)
In the face of traditional external marketing, the organization team around the funnel stage is dominant, where you have special advertising, public relations and other isolated islands.
Here, you still have advertising and public relations personnel. But they may work together under an “attractive” team.
Therefore, it is not necessarily as simple as “time to start a blog”. However, over time, with the right expectations and investments, inbound marketing can change not only the way people find your company, but also your bottom line.
How does inbound marketing work
Inbound marketing will not reinvent the wheel. It just takes advantage of the way people already behave online. This means that all you have to do is align your strategy (posts, ads, etc.) with each stage to move people from one stage to another.
Take the content as an example. Each item has a purpose. As a result, you don’t post blog posts at will as you check to-do items in the list.
Instead, you will create content for each funnel phase. okay.
Consciousness
People may not know that they need your products or services here.
So don’t expect them to ask for it. You must move upstream to address the topics, issues, and issues that they are most concerned about.
This mainly applies to top blog content such as the one you are reading. That’s why companies like HubSpot often release it ten times a day. Think of it as a better display ad, with only one investment, it will last forever.
Top funnel blog content
Therefore, trying to “attract” someone with “the X reason you need a plumber” is not very effective.
Early in the process, people need a catalyst or problem to get them to start looking in the first place.
It’s more likely that the toilet or faucet is broken. Their garbage disposal stopped working. The kitchen sink doesn’t drain. It’s been three days, and the rest of the food is starting to smell bad.
This is the signal of the problem. That’s why they started searching for “X reasons why my sink won’t drain” or “DIY kitchen sink repair”.
See? There is still no plumber. So I skipped the ad and went straight to the video.
Looking for problem fixes-SERP
The reason is that I am not ready to buy. My search query shows that I am looking for an answer, not a solution.
If you are a plumber, you now have two goals:
- Create relevant content to answer this person’s question (that is, advice on how to fix the drain, not about what a great plumber you are), and
- Make the other person realize that these may be several different problems, they all take some time to solve, and they can be a little smelly.
The second part is how you get someone from A-& gt; B by developing a need awareness.
The more people watch or read, the more they begin to realize that what they need is not a video on how to fix the sink. What they need is someone who is friendly, knowledgeable and quick to solve the damn problem for them, because they don’t have the time or patience to deal with it.
This is where you turn people who are looking for information into potential buyers.
Consider
The only goal of the last step is to improve brand awareness. Call it whatever you want. Nice eyes. The traffic is ideal. Because you have several tips for you to use, relocate these site visitors to return or take you to a higher level of discount.
So, even if they don’t remember you, even if they don’t do anything on your site the day after visiting your site, you can still follow them on the Internet until they look at you again.
Then, you have several choices.
You can hold their hand, guide them into consideration as safely as Sherpa collaboration, and offer simple options such as e-books to join the service.
Alternatively, you can plan ahead to show where they are going next: Google.
People use different types of keywords at each stage of the funnel.
During the consideration phase, they will ask more specifically how to find a potential solution to the problem. In other words, “how do you find a good plumber?” The problem is that they still haven’t asked for “pipeline quotation”. Not yet. So save it for the next step.
Instead, they are looking for how to compare plumbers to find the best.
Find a solution or provider in SERP
The content of the consideration phase can include any amount of content. The in-depth guide works well. The same is true of case studies and white papers.
These works, coupled with repeat customers, should also begin to become a low-hanging choice for downloadable resources.
Reward content CTA
Before entering the decision-making stage, there are two quick warnings.
First of all, no, you don’t need to choose to join the offer. It can be said that the world is moving away from it. But you do need a way to keep up with people who show at least some degree of interest in what you provide. (even if it’s just reading one or two posts. )
Collecting emails allows you to intelligently follow up and send content or offers based on what someone implicitly tells you they are interested in.
This does not mean that you send some general newsletters to everyone. This means associating what you send back with the original problem or pain point that brought them to your site in the first place.
Qualified potential customer
You can then use any number of tools (HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Infusionsoft, Ontraport, Mailchimp, etc.) to define these rules and what people should receive after taking (or not taking) action.
The second point here is that not everyone moves neatly from stage to stage like this. Unfortunately, real life is not that simple. Most likely, they will jump around and skip a few steps here or there.
But it doesn’t matter. The whole point of these long and lengthy processes is to eventually transform as many potential people as possible. This is what you do to build such a logical system.
Decide
Last. You’ve developed awareness. You have turned this fleeting awareness into a practical consideration of your business.
This is where you took it to the finish line.
People start to view your features, demos, and pricing pages from here. They are delving into the details and comparing you with other options before making a final decision.
So although it sounds cliche, it makes it easy for them to find these things!
Hootsuite uses a simple layout, with platforms and planes in the front and middle. Go deep into each one and you will see a great deal of detail about every small value enhancement attribute of their brand.
Platform and schedule exampl
Let’s take it back to the plumber.
I just searched a random website on Google to show you how it works. We have a problem with the kitchen sink, so we use this perfectly laid-out page to go back to the original question:
Answer questions page
Aside from the design, the content and layout are just right. It answers the common questions we initially encountered (kitchen / garbage disposal problems). It even solves the problem of plumbers that we often encounter (trained technicians, transparent pricing, and even a little social proof).
Next to these pages is the coupon page-perfect for fence nannies like me to finally call them.
Coupon page
All in all, it’s very good! They have covered all the basic knowledge. Their funnel should be very good.
The only potential bottleneck at this time is the top of the funnel and the whole “two-year thing”. Start increasing traffic-whether through awareness-raising blog posts or direct access to AdWords–, they should be able to immediately start attracting real buyers through their sites.
The cost of all this is only a fraction of the call center or billboard activity, which may deter them.
Summary
Nowadays, inbound marketing has received a lot of attention. This is true: it can help you drive more prospects and sales with other channels that may cost you a fraction of your cost.
But fashion alone is not the reason why it works well. It works because it is exactly what the customer is already doing. It matches their behavior and helps to provide them with the right content or offers or activities when they need it most.
The good news is that its starting cost is much lower than most other forms of advertising and promotion. Barriers to entry (from a purely financial point of view) are not bad at all. This may be important if you are a startup or startup that may not have a large advertising budget or external sales team.
The downside is that it may eventually take weeks, months or even years to finally surpass the deal flows you are currently seeing from other sources. It requires different ways of thinking to put all the puzzles together.
But once you get there? You’ll never look back.
