Everyone is busy with end-of-the-year activities, making sure that they are meeting their yearly goals and finishing up plans for next year. So, that’s why today’s article describes 3 reasons why you should do inbound marketing.
For those of you that haven’t heard of inbound marketing, take a look at this old post from HubSpot that explains it in greater detail.
However, for the purpose of this article, here is inbound marketing in a nutshell:
1. Create (compelling, remarkable, relevant and interesting content)
2. Optimize (for higher search engine results in the keywords you want to compete)
3. Promote (in social media, email marketing, lead nurturing campaigns)
4. Convert (more, with use of call to actions, landing pages and offers)
5. Analyze (where, when, what you are doing that is working and what’s NOT)
Reason 1) Your traditional marketing tactics aren’t working like they used to
Your strategies are sound and well thought-out and have always worked in the past, but the marketing world as you know it, has changed. For most of traditional marketing campaigns (e-mail, telemarketing, television ads, radio, etc.), you’ll be lucky to get a 3% response rate. I’ve never been one that likes to fail, let alone 97% of the time. What championship team ever got the trophy with those kinds of numbers? What would the 2011 World Series Champions, St. Louis Cardinals record look like with that ratio? An impressive, 5 wins – 157 losses.
Its time to stop spamming, annoying, wasting and put some good old creative spirit into understanding how you can help solve your prospects and current clients problems and give them helpful and interesting information on how they can do that. Believe me they will thank you for it. This is the foundation for inbound marketing you’ll build upon as your business grows.
Reason 2) Inbound marketing has proven itself as a big time performer and is surely here to stay
Whether your goals are attracting tons of new traffic to your website or optimizing your website to generate new qualified leads, inbound marketing is growing more and more in reputation and prestige. In a report done by HubSpot, "more than half of marketers increased their inbound marketing budget in 2011" (source: HubSpot's State of Inbound Marketing 2012). This marketing phenomenon is not going anywhere soon.
Another important little fact… MIT Sloan conducted a study of HubSpot clients and reported that the average HubSpot customer gets 420% more leads after 5 months of using HubSpot (source: hubspot.com). Now that’s impressive. Those are champion numbers.
Clearly the software helps your business generate those kinds of leads, but without a methodology and inbound marketing strategy, this is just not possible. It’s been said several times, but HubSpot can be thought of as the gym, but if you want to lose weight, you need a strategy and an inbound marketing coach to help you do that.
For a long list of Inbound Marketing Case Studies of companies applying inbound marketing to their marketing strategies, take a look at HubSpot’s case study page. The last I saw, there are dozens case studies, ranging from almost every industry and market.
Reason 3) Inbound Marketing is something you don’t want your competitors to discover
Even though inbound marketing is showing incredible results one after another, we are still very early in the adoption period. Just like many things in this world, the early bird does get the worm. So, I already know that your company almost does everything possible to increase or maintain your spot as the market leader (even if that is a very specific niche market), but inbound marketing gives you an advantage over your competitors. How?
When you can generate more traffic, convert more qualified leads in sales and better understand what your prospects interests, difficulties and pain-points are; and deliver helpful relevant information, that’s a big advantage.
But what if I told you, that with inbound marketing, you can do all of this more cost-effectively (yes, “cheap” would work here, too)? According to HubSpot's State of Inbound Marketing 2010, “Inbound marketing costs 62% less " per lead than traditional, outbound marketing.” Let’s hope your competitors aren’t reading this article, too!
Ok, now that you’ve learned these new bits of wisdom, you can go and tell you boss that it’s not your fault that your company is only hitting .030 in 2011 and have a new plan for 2012.
Hey, maybe it’s even a chance for you to get some extra recognition in 2012 and be the person to show him/her about inbound marketing and how it can revolutionize your company. Jump in, give it a try, the water is nice.
We’re here to help. Schedule a custom demo or free inbound marketing assessment with us.
