We Speak From Our Own Experience
What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a strategy that focuses on attracting customers through relevant and helpful content that adds value at every stage of the targeted consumer's buying journey. Through inbound marketing, prospective consumers find your company through various online company channels like blogs, search engines, e-books, infographics and social media.
Unlike outbound marketing, a business does not need to fight for attention from customers but instead will attract qualified prospects that are already seeking your product or service. Below are four business benefits of inbound marketing.
And along the way... check out the various "call to actions' asking you to consider downloading or watching the content, which we embedded in this blog to see examples of content produced for inbound marketing. I bet you can spot them all. Look at the side of this blog too. The goal with this strategy is that you read the blog, and see other content that provides more information on a deeper level, and you are willing to provide your name and email in exchange for getting it. You then get added into the inbound marketing software where you can have further custom curated content shared with you that through our inbound strategy would be of interest to you.
1. It’s Cost Effective
One of the first things that any brand marketer looks at when making a business decision is the cost. This is where inbound marketing takes the cake. In comparison to most outbound marketing efforts, a business is able to generate just as much, if not more leads for the company through inbound marketing for a fraction of the cost. And the leads will already be deeper in the buying cycle than a cold call can result in. These cost savings are important for any business, especially small and medium sized businesses that have tighter marketing budgets.
2. Increases Visibility and Brand Awareness
In today’s world, it’s easy for a brand to get lost amongst the thousands of other businesses out there. However, getting noticed by consumers is also easier than ever before. Through the internet, a brand is able to provide prospective consumers with content that aids them in their buyer journey while also increasing their chances of getting new business at the same time -- the very backbone of inbound marketing.
For example, if you’re a skateboarding company and you just wrote an awesome blog on why new silicone boards are better than wooden boards, a buyer who is online searching for a new skateboard may come across your blog (if it is optimized for SEO and Google) and then decide to purchase a silicone board from you. In addition, that buyer may share your blog across their own platforms where another prospective buyer may read your blog and want to buy a silicone board as well. Just like that, your brand was able to increase its awareness simply by posting content that was relevant to the buyer.
When you provide additional information in that blog that requires the reader to download the content to read or watch it, then you are at the same time asking for that reader's contact information so you can continue to share either more blogs, e-books, infographics or other educational material. Not salesy 'buy now' shout outs and requests, but instead content that they truly are going to find valuable.
3. Increase The Quality of Traffic & Leads
As a brand marketer, your main goal should be to get as many (quality) leads into your sales funnel as possible so that your sales team can do their job more easily. So, how do you increase the amount of quality leads that are inquiring about your product or service?
By consistently creating and promoting relatable content, the people that interact with your brand will be those that are already genuinely interested in your product or service, not just those that have fallen victim to your outbound marketing strategies. As a result, these prospective buyers are already a few steps down the sales funnel. In fact, brands that have implemented an inbound strategy find that overall traffic may drop off but their sales have increased. Now, how is that possible? Well, that’s because the quality of leads coming into the sales funnel has dramatically improved. You are now targeting an actively buying consumer versus someone who may not be relevant at all.
4. Increases Trust and Credibility
This is arguably the most important benefit of an inbound marketing strategy for any business’ future plans. By consistently giving the world great content, your brand will slowly start to build itself as a thought leader in the industry. As a result, your brand may be the first one that pops into someone’s head when they’re thinking about making a new purchase.
For example, say you’re a kitchen appliances company and over the years, your company has been consistently putting out content that talks about some of the newest trends and technology in the kitchen space. Today, someone is looking to purchase a new dishwasher and immediately thinks to go to your website because over the years, they’ve come to associate your brand as the brand that’s always up-to-date on the latest and greatest. Boom. Just like that, your brand is at the forefront of this buyer’s decision making process all because of the content that you’ve been putting out over the years. You can thank your inbound marketing program for that new lead.
Getting great press leads by the way plays right into inbound marketing. It gets your company noticed, and when the individual who read the article hops over to your website, they need to see material that they can download and read or watch that continues that conversion process.
Inbound Marketing Is Not Done Overnight
One thing to keep in mind about inbound marketing is that it’s not a quick fix; it’s a long process that requires several iterations and heaps of patience. But like they say, “good things take time”.
So, sit back, relax and start putting great content out there! The results will be worth the wait and hard work. When first getting started, it may make sense to work with an agency that specializes in setting up inbound marketing programs for brands. Here at Hollywood Branded, we have our own inbound marketing program that I mentioned above - and because of our having to learn the ropes along the way, we are now offering brands the opportunity to leverage our own experience over the least four years, to help build their own Inbound Marketing programs.
To learn more about how we can help you out, reach out to our agency!
And in the meantime, check out the downloadable guide by clicking the image below to how product placement and promotions work - because Inbound Marketing and Entertainment Marketing go hand in hand. It's all about content that includes your brand. Entertainment Marketing allows your brand to become part of a third party's content. Inbound Marketing allows your brand to create your own content. Both can be leveraged for your brand's Inbound Marketing campaign.
And if you are interested now in product placement... also check out these blogs our agency wrote!
- 4 Common Myths About Product Placement Debunked
- 5 Ways Brand Marketers Secure Product Placement To Increase Sales
- 9 Reasons Why Programmatic Scheduling Wont Work For Product Placement
- A Mad Men Case Study On Liquor Product Placement
- How Much Does Product Placement Cost
