Internet has allowed us all to access all kinds of information, and this has generated that it has become the tool that we use for any doubt or need, from the search for a product, a service, health, leisure, entertainment, etc. Whatever content we need, we go to the Internet to find it. And thanks to the network, users are increasingly informed and become very selective when it comes to deciding what information to consume. Marketing cannot ignore this reality. We will give you the tips used by a successful inbound marketing agency to convert visitors into leads, these leads into customers, and these customers into loyal customers and brand ambassadors. Quite a challenge.
Phases of the Inbound Marketing methodology
It is no longer enough to launch a product and advertise it in the media hoping to reach the largest audience as it was done before and fill televisions, radios, smartphones, tablets, etc. with advertising (outbound marketing). The impact achieved is very low nowadays and as a consequence the objectives of attracting users that companies expect are not achieved. Moreover, it can even be counterproductive to apply these intrusive methods, since people are increasingly apathetic to the indiscriminate bombardment of information. People require a much more personalized treatment and demand to be informed to them and at the time they choose.
Today’s users are much more informed, thanks precisely to putting the means at their fingertips to reach every piece of information they demand. Therefore, we are delivering information to potential customers who are much more demanding in their search for that information. And they also want to find that content quickly and efficiently. We will capture their attention to lead them to our content, we will try to get them to contact us, we will work them to convert them into customers and we will make them loyal following the four stages of inbound marketing:
Attract:
In this first stage of attraction we have a clear and clear objective, to get our buyer persona to consume the information we have generated for them.
The search for information about products and services in search engines, or in social networks, of our potential buyers/contractors should lead us to get us to be the ones to inform them. If every time a potential customer requires information about the sector he shares with us, we provide it to him, we will have a clear advantage over our competitors. Our buyer persona will be getting information in one of the urls dependent on our domain, he will be in “our home on the Internet”.
We can include the searches following two criteria that most of the times our users have in mind:
– I want to buy or hire a product or service: the type of content that we must present to the user is corporate. That is to say, pages of our web that detail those products or services, that speak very well of our quality, of our added values or of the strength of our company. In this case we try to sell the user and get him to contact us.
– I want objective information about a product or service, I don’t want to be sold: in this case we must use content marketing as a strategy. And the basis on which we must work is the blog. And what we should post on it are articles that manage to inform the user. Objective information, without naming ourselves. If the user is looking for information, we are going to give it to him.
To convert:
We already have the buyer persona visiting a content of our website, and it is time to try to encourage them to contact us. It is about getting a significant percentage of our visitors to contact us, either by filling out a contact form, or by interacting with us through a chat…etc.
We have different elements that will help us to achieve our objectives: call to action, landing pages, infographics… and we can even try to offer the user to extend the information we have just given him by means of an ebook. In it, they will leave us their data to download it and we will have them in our database to be able to continue sending them information that has proven to be of interest to them.
Closing:
This stage is the sales funnel, the funnel between marketing and sales. The former must work the leads that the conversion stage gave us so that the latter can work the sale at the right time.
At this stage a fundamental technique in inbound marketing appears: lead nurturing. Through it, we will proceed to interact with our prospects through the generation of automated workflows by means of a CRM. We will send personalized communications, with information of interest to the user, treating them in a friendly, educational, formative way, where they will perceive closeness and interest on the part of our brand and where they will be treated according to their needs, and not as just one more.
We will apply lead nurturing when the user needs more time to mature and therefore we will send him information of interest. And we will also apply lead nurturing to support the commercial area in its work of closing leads through personalized and friendly communications that will remind our prospects that we have a very interesting proposal on the table.
Each prospect must be managed according to its characteristics and demands. Let’s not be intrusive in our procedures, we will not achieve our objectives in this way. Let’s give the user the good treatment and management they deserve. That will be the way to success in closing them.
The more quality information you have to apply to your strategy, the better.
Loyalty:
In this stage we will continue along the same lines as above. We must treat our customers in a personalized way, with information of interest to them and with details in which we show them that we remember them at important moments.
At this stage we will use lead nurturing again to achieve, through automated communications, the objectives mentioned above.
In this loyalty stage, we will have one objective above all others: to turn our customers into ambassadors of our brand. The fact that they speak well of us in their family or friends’ environment will undoubtedly bring us customers. And in the simplest way, we will have managed to increase our clientele thanks to the “work” of our customers.
Actions to implement the inbound marketing methodology
For the proper development and fulfillment of the four pillars of inbound marketing that we have just seen, you can rely on the following premises:
Make metrics your main ally:
It is essential that you know the number of people who enter your page, the hours of peak flow, what are the sources of traffic, how many visits were converted into leads, and how many leads became effective customers. In short, there are a good number of KPIs that you can use to guide your strategy or redirect it in case you detect ways to improve it.
Know your potential customer:
Studying the profile of your future customer to develop the sales strategy is essential, since without this prior study we cannot have a strategy that will lay the foundations for a successful work; and inbound marketing proposes to do it around the figure of the buyer persona.
– Plan: A person in charge must be appointed and define the scope (how the information will be obtained, how it will be presented, when, etc.).
– Research: Surveys, interviews and any other available method to reach the target audience should be designed.
– Analyze: This is the natural step that follows research. Here the person in charge must extract the relevant points obtained from the previous step.
– Finally, the person in charge will present the results of his or her study to be incorporated into the strategy.
Get to know your current customers:
Take advantage of the access the client gave you and their knowledge of the sector to get to know their customers, their behavior and their ways of proceeding. This will lead you to configure the buyer persona target with greater accuracy. There will always be points in common between different customers and future ones.
Generate different content:
People don’t want to see the same thing all the time. Not even something similar. Bring out the madman in you and let your imagination fly. You can make use of videos, infographics, pictures, boxes, etc. Anything you can think of can be a good idea. Original and relevant content will open many doors on the Internet.
Content marketing is an essential tool nowadays in any self-respecting digital strategy.
In conclusion, this is the most effective marketing method today in the digital world. Inbound marketing proposes a personalized, friendly and formative communication; extending its work philosophy from the existence of a user interested in content of interest and capturing their attention, to get this user to contact us to be interested in our services or products, through the closing process after passing through the sales funnel and, as a culmination, make it an ambassador of our brand. All this by achieving a fundamental objective: the customer’s bond with our brand.
