A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO INBOUND MARKETING

A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO INBOUND MARKETING

What is Inbound Marketing? Inbound marketing is a marketing methodology that moves away from interruptive methods and instead focuses on attracting customers through content and interactions that provide relevant and helpful information. With inbound marketing, potential customers find your brand through channels such as blogs, search engines and social media, unlike outbound marketing which fights for their attention. By creating content that is designed to address the needs of your ideal customers, inbound attracts qualified leads and helps to build the trust and credibility of your brand. The Inbound Methodology Inbound is the best way to turn strangers into customers and promoters of your business. Inbound marketing has become the most effective method for doing business online. Instead of the old outbound methods, such as buying ads, buying email lists and paying for your leads, inbound focuses on creating high quality content that draws people towards your brand and products -- where they naturally want to be. By lining up the content you publish with your customer s interests you naturally attract inbound traffic which you can then convert, close, and delight over time. There are four actions that you must take in order to obtain visitors, leads, customers Engage Convert Nurture Delight Analyse Relevant content Keywords & SEO Social media Blog articles Calls-to-Action Landing pages Content offers Contact forms E-mail campaigns Lead Intellegence CRM interaction Additional offers Events Calls-to-Action Social media Email campaigns Key metrics Analytical tools Adjustments and promoters: Attract, Convert, Close and Delight. In order to achieve these actions there are tools that you can use to accomplish these actions. On the diagram above you can see how these actions and tools align. While on the diagram you can see where the tools first come into to play it doesn t mean that this is the only place they are applicable. Several tools, for example email, can be essential in several stages of the inbound methodology. 2

The Inbound Marketing Funnel While the concept of the sales funnel is not a new one, inbound marketing has developed the sales funnel to help marketers visualize where a customer is in their buyer s journey to better meet their needs, simply put: publishing the right content at the right time in the right place. Since this sales funnel is at the centre of a successful inbound marketing strategy, it is important to be able to move leads through the funnel and align your content with the buyer s journey in order to attract, convert, close, and delight your ideal customers. The buyer s journey is split into three parts: Top of the Funnel (ToFu), Middle of the Funnel (MoFu) and Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu). These are explained below; Strangers SEO BLOG SOCIAL MEDIA SITES MOBILE OPTIMISATION ATTRACT Visitors CALLS TO ACTION FORMS LANDING PAGE OPTIMISATION CONVERT Leads EMAIL OPTIMISATION SALES ALERTS CRM SYNCH LEAD SCORING PERSONALISED EMAIL + WEB + SOCIAL NURTURING CLOSE Customers FEEDBACK FORMS EMAIL + WEB+ SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT DELIGHT Promoters TOFU: TOP OF THE FUNNEL At the very top of your sales funnel you're looking to attract a much larger audience of leads, because you're working to attract relevant traffic without filtering or discouraging conversions. The most common form of ToFu content would be your blog articles. From there, calls-to-actions should lead ToFu prospects to conversion opportunities, like tip sheets or ebooks that encourage leads to trade their contact information for the helpful content inside. Your goal with ToFu content should be to educate your audience on a specific question, need or pain point that they're looking to address, but without a sales tie-in. You will get the opportunity to do this with your MoFu content. 3

MOFU: MIDDLE OF THE FUNNEL Once a lead converts on an initial ToFu content offer, they progress into the MoFu stage. This is viewed as the most complicated funnel stage because of the broad diversity of interested leads who haven't been fully qualified. In this stage of the funnel, your content should continue to educate but also start the process of positioning your company as the solution to the lead's needs and challenges. Advanced ebooks are a great form of content in this stage but case studies, white papers and videos will perform well at beginning to build your credibility. BOFU: BOTTOM OF THE FUNNEL The BoFu stage is the most crucial in the funnel as at this point you are going for the sale. Your BoFu stage may not consist of content at all. At this point your leads know you and are comfortable engaging one-on-one. This is where a free assessment, evaluation or trial works nicely to start the dialogue and to begin to fully qualify your most interested leads. Tools for Inbound Marketing In essence, inbound marketing covers all areas of online marketing and in each case the goal is generation of leads through high quality content. The 5 main tools for successful inbound marketing are; BLOGGING The attention of your audience is captured using relevant blog content that is carefully tailored to address their interests and needs. SEO content plays a significant role in this process. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO): Through improving rankings in search engines like Google, potential customers are able to find your brand more easily. New site visitors are then converted into leads. SOCIAL MEDIA: The distribution of content through social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn raises awareness of the company within the target audience. LANDING PAGES: Well-crafted landing pages help to generate new leads and increase conversions. E-MAIL MARKETING: Personalized emails can attract interested users to the right content. 4

Four Key Elements for Successful Inbound Marketing 1. ATTRACT The first step in the inbound methodology is "Attract". You don t want unqualified leads sent to your website, you want quality traffic, the people who are most likely to convert and be a happy customer that returns. Examples of important tools used to attract qualified customers to your website are: Blogging Social Media Marketing Free E-Book Free Download Other Free Offer SEO 2. CONVERT Once you ve attracted the right customers to your website, your next step is to get their information and convert them. At the least, you ll want an email address - after all, a person s contact information is the most valuable currency there is to a business, right? Examples of important tools in converting visitors to leads are: Call to action Forms Landing Page Database 3. CLOSE You ve attracted the right visitors and converted the right leads, now you just need to close and you ve got a customer. Did you know that there are tools out there to help you make sure you re closing the right leads at the right time? Emails CRMS Marketing Automation 5

4. DELIGHT According to the Inbound Methodology, every company should continue to delight their customers even after they ve become a customer. Keep providing exceptional and delightful service so that your current customers become your company promoters. Examples of important tools in delighting your customers: Social Monitoring through Social Media Surveys Follow up calls Follow up emails Getting Started with your Inbound Marketing When it comes to inbound marketing, the more you invest, greater your return. Creating useful content takes time and a lot of groundwork, but once you commit to the work the results will show how well it can pay off. To get started with inbound you need to: Identify your ideal customer(s) and learn all you can about them. You can t begin to write content that will resonate with your customers until you know what makes them tick. Determine what makes you remarkable. What is your unique and compelling story? Why should your audience listen to you? Choose your delivery platforms. Will you blog? Tweet? Use Facebook and LinkedIn? Create and commit to a steady content schedule. It is important to create a schedule that will consistently produce fresh and relevant content to continue to engage your audience. Bear in mind that your themes should focus on customer issues and not on your business. Focus on quality rather than quantity. You should be focused on creating content that educates your audience and builds brand authority. The right content will be shared which will increase you reach and with this increasing awareness, trust and ultimately leads. Also, don t forget to set aside time for weekly analysis. This will help you in understanding how effective your efforts have been and what can be improved. 6

Inbound Marketing Terminology Glossary Inbound Marketing: A complete strategic marketing method high-quality content is created and marketed on the internet to make it easy for any prospects to find. In inbound marketing, prospects looking for your niche find your company and are interested in what you have to say, making them a qualified lead. In contrast, traditional marketing such as cold calling or radio and print advertising pushes your message in front of people who may not be interested in your product or service. Inbound Marketing Funnel: The inbound marketing funnel is the path that a prospect takes from their initial contact with your company to their final conversion into a customer. A prospect can enter the funnel at any stage and is nurtured down the funnel with a goal to convert them at the bottom funnel offer. Call-To-Action (CTA): A call-to-action is the graphic or text used to get a person to click to convert on some type of offer. Click-Through Rate (CTR): The clickthrough rate describes the percentage of people who clicked on a CTA or ad versus the number of people who saw the CTA or ad. Landing Page: A landing page is a page tailored for a specific product or service and a specific type of visitor with a goal of converting the visitor. Premium Content Offer: A premium content offer is some type of high-quality, in-depth content that you can offer for free to help convert people at certain stages of the inbound marketing funnel. Top-Of-The-Funnel (TOFU) Offer: The TOFU offer is some type of educational content that is fairly general in terms of content and interested audience. This will be the initial offer used to educate the prospect about the general concepts of your industry and convert prospect visitors into leads. Middle-Of-The-Funnel (MOFU) Offer: The MOFU offer is the second premium content offer that will be marketed to prospects or leads in the inbound marketing funnel. The goal of the MOFU offer is to qualify and establish credibility with the lead. Anyone who converts on your MOFU offer should be considered a qualified lead. Bottom-Of-The-Funnel (BOFU) Offer: When the lead reaches the BOFU offer, they are qualified and ready to take the next step in the sales process. Here, your BOFU offer will be some type of promotional offer such as a free consultation, discount or promotional deal. Conversion Rate: Conversion rate refers to the number of people who successfully filled out a form on your website to convert into a lead versus the total number of people who visited the page. A/B Testing: An "A/B test" is used for optimizing a piece of content or a graphic to increase the conversion or click-through rates. In an A/B test, two or more different styles of content are shown randomly in a space. Each piece of content will have slight variations and, over time, you'd be able to track which piece is performing better. Prospect: Anyone who visits your website is considered a prospect or visitor. The fact that they actively decided to visit your website to see the information you're providing already qualifies them as a prospect of your industry or niche. The goal with a prospect is to convert them into a lead using strong calls-to-action, optimized landing pages and great content offers. Leads: A lead is someone who visited your website and successfully filled out one of your forms for either an offer or a contact page. Once a prospect is converted into a lead, they are in the inbound marketing funnel and will be nurtured down the funnel with a goal of them converting at each funnel stage. Lead Nurturing Campaign: Lead nurturing campaigns are used to "push" the lead down the inbound marketing funnel and are the connections between each funnel stage. Lead nurturing campaigns should be specifically tailored for the particular stage the lead is at, while also including calls-to-action for them to move down the funnel and convert on the next offer. 7

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