When asked about their inbound marketing strategy, companies may point to their active presence on Twitter, large number of followers on Facebook or daily blog posts as proof that they’re marketing effectively. But are they really grasping the concept of inbound marketing?
Instead of the old school methods of cold calling, buying email lists, and flooding inboxes with spam, inbound marketing focuses on creating quality, relevant content that your customers actually want to see. According to HubSpot, inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than employing traditional outbound marketing tactics. Inbound marketing draws attention to your company, generating leads, driving website traffic, boosting conversion rates, and creating advocates for your brand. Any experienced marketeer cannot deny the appeal of inbound marketing, but they may struggle with understanding how inbound marketing works.
Inbound marketing is a very popular yet often misunderstood marketing methodology. To help you gain a better understanding of inbound marketing and create an integrated marketing strategy, we’re clearing up some common myths surrounding this concept.
Myth #1: Creating Content Will Generate Leads
To implement a successful inbound marketing strategy, companies not only need to create content. They need to create relevant, remarkable content. When you develop any piece of content, whether it’s a blog post, whitepaper or ebook, that content should align with your target customer’s wants and needs.
So, what defines “remarkable content”? Remarkable content takes your buyer personas and the buyer’s journey into consideration. Before you write anything, you need to understand the purpose of the content and your target audience. You should tailor the content to their interests, needs, and wants. To gain a deeper understanding of your target audience, you should answer these questions:
- Who is your target customer?
- What are their interests, demographics, motivations, challenges, pain points, and identifying characteristics?
- How does your product or service make their lives easier?
- What distribution channels do they frequent?
Once you’ve answered these questions, you can develop your buyer personas - semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers based on research and real data. Be sure to reference your buyer personas when you develop a content strategy and distribute your content where they will most likely see it.
Also, make sure you create content for every stage of the buyer’s journey. If your ideal customer is in the awareness stage, or the first stage of the buyer’s process, they will be searching for content that will educate them on their problem or pain point. This isn’t the time to share your product information, case studies or vendor/product comparisons, as they’re not ready to make a purchase just yet. Those resources should be saved for the decision stage, or the final stage of the process when they’re deciding on a vendor.
Myth #2: Success is Measured by Number of Followers
Yes, building thousands of Twitter followers through email blasts and asking people to follow you is an impressive feat. But have you measured how these followers impact your lead generation or revenue? While social media marketing is a great way to share your content and attract potential customers, it’s just one piece of the inbound marketing framework.
Instead of focusing on Facebook post shares and likes, you should be concentrating on viable metrics to measure the success of your inbound marketing. For example, you could take a look at search volume. Google Trends can give you better insight on whether or not people are searching for your company and products. You can see if there’s an upward trend in searches, and if there’s a plummet in searches for your competitors (a win for you!).
You can also pay close attention to how many inbound links your website or blog has earned. Sharing content on social media is a great way to accrue links, and you can find out the number of links pointing to your pages by using inbound link tracking services like Open Site Explorer from SEOmoz.
Myth #3: Inbound Marketing is All You Need
No matter what you may hear, inbound marketing doesn’t replace other forms of marketing. While HubSpot shows that inbound marketing doubles the average site conversion rates, from 6% to 12%, seen with traditional marketing methods, that doesn’t mean you should neglect other marketing efforts.
As long as your other marketing tactics are producing high-quality results, there is no reason to eliminate them. Your SEO and content marketing offer numerous benefits and shouldn’t be forgotten. All of your strategies should work together. Instead of thinking of inbound marketing as a replacement for other marketing tools, look at it as a way to improve the overall effectiveness of your marketing strategy.
Despite the hoopla surrounding inbound marketing tactics, there are many misconceptions and fictions attached to this area of business. Debunking common inbound marketing myths will help you employ effective inbound marketing strategies to attract visitors to your site, convert them into leads, and transform them into customers.
