As Hubspot partner I’m a massive fan of Inbound Marketing. Sometimes called ‘permission’ marketing, Inbound focuses on the 96% of people who begin their purchase journey with an internet search. This is opposed to Outbound marketing where business spend an enormous amount of effort and indeed cash, on spamming the unsuspecting public with unwanted sales messages whether than public want them to or not!
The numbers stack up. Chances are, even if you are actually selling something on your website, up to 99% of visitors will bounce back out of your website without leaving a trace that they have ever been there. Less than 4%, and often, less than 1% will usually do anything that you’d like them too, like clicking your link, or calling your sales line.
Inbound works on the basis that we should be focussing in on the 96% of people coming to your website, and not just those that are ready to buy. To an extent, those ready to buy, sort of look after themselves. Although, clearly, it’s important to get them over the line too!
Inbound use the phrase in the headline as a mission statement. It's about Attracting the right people to your site, Converting them into leads, and ultimately into customers, and then Delighting them so that they become brand fans, or advocates for your business.
The process looks something like this, taken from our agency’s Hubspot partner proven data driven marketing methodology and supercharged by the HubSpot marketing platform:
Using all the content tools at our disposal like, Search Engine Optimisation and Blogging, social media and yes, paid for ads, we need to work to attract the right people to our website. That is people who will be at some point interested in doing business with us.
This is the step I see most businesses missing. All those people bouncing out of your site might be interested in staying in touch. But you have to ask them to stay in touch and give them a reason to do so. But if they do stay in touch it's so much easier to sell to them when they get to the point in their journey where they are ready to buy.
Staying in touch with your potential customers through social media and email is a brilliant way to continue to help them as they search for the answer to their problems, and beyond. If you are doing this right, you’ll even modify the content your serve your customer depending on their level of engagement with you. And the closer they get to the ‘bottom’ of the funnel, or making a decision, the more likely they will be to stick with a company that has helped them through every step of the way.
Bad reviews have killed more businesses online than anything else. We’ve all seen those erroneous reviews from the one off issues even our favourite retailers have had. Most people expect to see the odd negative review, it makes your reviews seem more realistic I think. And anyway, like everything else, it's more important that you deal with the negative review properly than anything else.
But good reviews are like gold! When you have them you should celebrate them. The trouble is, people are way more likely to leave a negative review than a positive one. That's just human nature.
So it's really important we take every opportunity to delight our customers after we have had their business. Not only are they more likely to post a positive review, but they are even more likely to tell their friends and colleagues about their great experience with us.
Years ago it was important to tell sales oriented business to get ‘into’ marketing. And put the customer first. Today it's even more important than it's ever been. There is some much choice and so much content out there to help people make these decisions. If you aren't out there in the digital channels having these conversations, you are missing vast swathes of opportunity.
Tony Dowling is a 30 year marketing veteran who has co founded the only specialist Inbound Hubspot Partner Agency in Wales. Get in touch with Real Inbound today for your free assessment and begin the journey.