Inbound marketing is the process of guiding and helping potential customers in finding your business. This mainly happens before the customer is ready to purchase a product or service, yet initiating early contact can lead to a preference for your brand and, as a result, leads and revenue.
Inbound marketing is an approach that employs a variety of pull marketing techniques. It involves content marketing, blogs, live events, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, emails, SMS, and more. And you use these to raise brand awareness and bring in new customers.
Because these tactics don't make consumers feel like they're being sold to, they appeal to customers.
Inbound marketing material is instructive, engaging, and well-received by customers. And inbound marketing, when done right, can produce far more significant outcomes when compared to traditional marketing. This is because the old style usually interrupts audiences rather than inviting them to participate with content.
So when customers find your company through inbound content, it has an enormous impact on their marketing decisions moving forward and influences how they perceive your product and brand in general.
What's the best part? Inbound marketing focuses on brains rather than budget because it generates only inbound leads.
Customers are in the driver's seat with inbound marketing. So it connects you with people who are genuinely and enormously interested in what you have to say.
Inbound marketing can help with social media shares, brand exposure, and SEO efforts, in addition to lead conversions and customer retention.
However, many individuals can become skeptical of inbound marketing at first. And this can be because transitioning from traditional marketing approaches to inbound marketing may appear to be a big step.
But there's no denying that it works, and statistics back it up.
5 Surprising Inbound Marketing Truths
Here are five indisputable inbound marketing truths that will make you wish you had begun implementing it sooner.
Surprising Fact No. 1
Instead of advertisements, consumers prefer to get their information through articles or blog posts.
Many modern marketers will say that cold calling is a thing of the past. This is because people don't like to be bothered taking a call for something that they aren't interested in.
Ads are also a turn-off in the same way. Consumers are on a page for something they want – not ads.
Nobody wants to be interrupted from consuming something they like. So it would be best to seamlessly blend your marketing message on something they like.
And blogs or articles are significantly useful in doing so.
In fact, people prefer blogs to magazines, newspapers, and advertisements because of the personal touch they provide. They appreciate that the site has a human behind it who shares their highs and lows, offers suggestions or life hacks, and solicits feedback from readers.
Views into various lifestyles, interests, and points of view fascinate blog readers. And blogs provide insight into ordinary people's lives, including how it feels to be that person and live that life.
This is why articles or blog posts are preferred by 80% of decision-makers over ads. They are interesting and relatable, and significantly effective in naturally selling your product.
Surprising Fact No. 2
Using email and SMS are significantly powerful in bringing in clients.
Email marketing done right can help you funnel subscribers in your list towards conversion. The idea is to deal with them at a personal level by sending them custom emails of value.
Email can help in getting new customers and bringing back those who either bounce or abandon carts.
In the same way, SMS can help you get return buyers and save lost customers. And many marketers will say that SMS can be better than email when it comes to decreasing cart abandonment.
This is because people are not notified by their emails all the time. And sometimes, consumers are not keen to open messages in their inboxes.
On the other hand, SMS notifications can be regarded as more urgent than other pings. They feel more organic and personal than emails – mobile numbers are perceived to be more personal than an email ad.
By the end of 2020, 48.7 million people will have voluntarily agreed to receive SMS messages from their favorite businesses.
There is no medium more connected to the customer than SMS marketing when it comes to direct marketing. Checking, receiving, and answering text messages is the most popular activity on people's phones during the day, according to 68% of respondents.
Consumers opt into campaigns via text message marketing, allowing them to make a tremendous leap down the sales funnel. And 82% of consumers say they open each and every text message that they receive.
One in every four internet users is already a mobile-only user, meaning they solely use their phone to access the internet. And the average person checks their phone four times every day.
So SMS can significantly make an impact on your marketing and business. And text marketing is exceptionally effective, with open rates of up to 98 percent for SMS messages.
But the thing is, when you do SMS for abandoned carts, you have to make your messaging right. And you need to be able to send the correct message to the right person at the proper time.
The key to effective SMS marketing is to establish a mutually beneficial relationship between your company and your customers.
For example, if they were offered flash bargains, offers, or coupons in exchange, 50% of consumers said they would join an SMS loyalty program.
To get to this level or do any good SMS marketing, you need the proper market research, lead categorization, personalization, value giving, and send automation.
These requisite tasks for SMS marketing can take a lot of work if you do them manually. This is true if you are operating on an eCommerce platform like Shopify, exposing you to thousands of potential customers.
Surprisingly there are many tools that you can use. If you are doing business using Shopify, you can use Winback; an SMS app specialized in reducing your cart abandonment.
This tool seamlessly integrates (fully compatible) with your Shopify eCommerce store and does all the analytics for you. You can automate triggers, data management, and sending of offers that can bring lost customers back to your store.
Surprising Fact No. 3
To attract new customers to your website, you must use social media.
In the 2000s, social media was treated like a novelty thing where people simply shared information with one another. But now, every business must engage in social media if they want to get new customers, further nurture clients, and sustain their brand.
Multiple social media profiles are an essential component of inbound marketing. When you reach out to all platforms that your target audience uses, you can funnel in more leads and potentially get more conversions.
Surprising Fact No. 4
Inbound marketing nearly doubles the conversion rate of your website.
According to studies, organizations that use inbound marketing have seen their average site conversion rate increase from 6-12%.
Inbound marketing delivers measurable ROI for 41% of marketers globally, while 82% of them who blog experience positive ROI.
Additionally, inbound marketing generates 54% more leads than standard outbound marketing.
Surprising Fact No. 5
Inbound is cheaper than traditional marketing.
Businesses that depend on inbound marketing save more than $14 for each new customer obtained. In fact, content marketing is 62% less expensive than traditional marketing, yet it generates three times the number of leads.
Conclusion
Inbound marketing is incredibly helpful to your online store. Not only from a sales and growth perspective; it's also a known contributor to the valuation of your Ecommerce business. When you implement inbound marketing methods for your eCommerce, you give yourself a needed advantage in the competition.
Also, it is a more organic yet highly effective way of getting fresh leads that you can convert. And it can help you get the revenue that you want.
Want to know more about Inbound Marketing? Contact us right now and talk to our team of experts.
