In the past, sales and marketing involved aggressive techniques to identify potential customers and convince them to purchase a company’s product or service. These techniques, known 
as ”outbound marketing,” included cold calling, direct mail and television and radio advertising.
There were several problems with these techniques:
-
They represented a “scatter gun” approach to identifying potential customers with low conversion rates of 1% to 2%
-
They resulted in multiple rejections of salespersons’ marketing attempts, which led to discouraged sales staff and high turnover
-
They were expensive in terms of the acquisition cost for each new customer.
With the maturity of the Internet, the expansion of social media and the simplicity of developing content that includes targeted keywords, inbound marketing is now the preferred method of acquiring new customers.
Inbound marketing includes:
-
Regularly posted marketing messages
-
Information on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter
-
Blogging
-
Online customer feedback vehicles
What makes inbound marketing so effective is that the customer, due to an immediate need, locates the business via online searches. Thus, the customer is already self-identified, highly motivated and closing the sale is often simply a formality.
For any business to be successful with this contemporary technique, the business owner should develop an inbound marketing plan. This will assure success in a relatively short period of time.
The inbound marketing plan should include the following elements:
-
Make a list of the primary products or services the company offers. This list should include the products or services which are most popular or in most demand. These will represent primary source for the keywords you will use for your online content, social media posts and blogs.
-
Focus the inbound marketing plan around these products or services by including them in: a) Content on web site landing pages; b) Posts on Facebook and/or Twitter; and c) Content within blogs.
-
Create or modify the landing pages on your web site to include the keywords for the most popular products and services. Populate the with appropriate and valuable offers.
-
If Facebook pages and Twitter accounts have not been created, these should be established as soon as possible. Postings should occur on a twice weekly basis and can include information about new product offerings, new staff people, customer testimonials, etc., including photos.
-
Create a blog for posting more detailed information on industry developments, product developments, or helpful hints. Posts to the blog can be done less frequently than on Facebook and Twitter, about 3-8 times per month. More content in any of these places is always better then lessand is never wasted.
A strategically sound inbound marketing plan that is properly and methodically implemented will result in more fulfilled sales personnel and increased revenue for the business.
Call us to set up a free consultation
