According to a recent report, an average corporation spends over 11% of the total revenue on marketing. Even with that kind of spending, many companies fail to generate desired results with their campaign because companies try to push the products into the throat of a cold audience.
No one wants to be sold, which is the reason traditional marketing methods do not work well when it comes to generating leads.
It would have been great for companies if a person purchased their product/service at first glance. However, it does not work that way. There is a buying cycle that a potential customer must go through before making a purchase.
In inbound marketing, we pull the cold audience, give them value for free to get them familiar with the brand, compelling them to give away their information. For instance, we publish valuable content, solve their problems, give away actionable tips to gain the trust of the people.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is any marketing method where you attract customers to your offer, engage with them, and lead them to make a purchase. Some of the conventional inbound marketing methods are content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, conversational bots, and Click-to-Text.
Popular Inbound Marketing Tools to Help You in Your Marketing Activities
HubSpot Inbound Marketing software is one of the most preferred inbound marketing software on the market. There is no need to spend even a dime to try HubSpot. Furthermore, the free plan has many powerful features that let you manage your customer relation, social media accounts, advertisement performance, and so on.
Some other inbound marketing tools that you should consider are:
1. JotForm
You need a landing page to collect the list of people who are interested in your product. JotForm lets you build a form with its incredibly simple-to-use drag and drop tool that allows you to structure, design, and add CTA (call to action) buttons to your page.
With JotForm, you will be able to collect the information of the visitors via a landing page that you can create with it. There are thousands of templates that you can use with JotForm and all you need to do is customize the section like name, address, headline, and so on.
2. Drift
The recent report found that over 82% of customers consider quick responsiveness as the #1 factor that decides the customer experience. A great way to enhance your customer experience is by installing live chat.
Drift allows you to install intelligent chatbots. It interacts with your users on the website and connects your users with you when needed.
To install Drift on your website, you only need to customize the chatbot and copy the script to your site. Here is a complete tutorial that will help you out.
3. MailChimp
MailChimp is a popular email marketing software that allows the user to create automated email sequence, collect user information, design email structure/layout, and more. To create an email sequence with MailChimp, you can add campaign and write emails in advance. Here is how you can integrate MailChimp to your site.
4. Text Request
Many businesses often ignore SMS marketing. Here is a mind-blowing study that would open up your mind to the potential of text messaging. According to the Openmarket survey, a text message came out as the #1 preferred channel to receive business message among people in the age group of 18-34.
Text Request lets you create collect leads, generate MMS/SMS, send a group message, and more via your business phone number from any devices. Using text request is rather simple, as you only need to add mobile number to the list and send text via Text Request system instantaneously. Here is a process to do it.
Why Organizations Prefer Using Inbound Marketing for Lead Generation?
There are plenty of reasons why organizations prefer inbound marketing to generate a list of potential clients. Here are the top 7 reasons:
1. Cost-Effective
Many inbound marketing methods only need you to spend as low as $5 to get started. You can create your first campaign with $5 per day on Facebook, and it is similar to Google. If you want to upload a video on YouTube, you can do it for free. SEO is another excellent source of quality traffic, and you can optimize your pages for a small cost.
Moreover, you get to reach out to a targeted audience with inbound marketing methods.
2. Helps to Track the Results
You can track your campaign in real-time and adjust accordingly with inbound marketing methods.
For instance, you can create multiple emails, Facebook, and Google campaigns and see the results of your campaigns immediately. It allows you to improve your strategy and prevent you from wasting money on campaigns that are not working.
Besides the platform-based analytic, you can also use plenty of third-party analytic tools that can help you track many additional metrics, even more accurately.
3. Develop Trust and Increase the Credibility
By publishing useful content on your site, social media profiles, and sending emails, you are building a relationship and trust with your potential customers. If your content is convincing, they are more likely to provide their information to you for creating a business relationship with your company.
One study has found that the users after reading educational content are 131% more likely to purchase the product/service. There are plenty of scams online, and many internet users are well aware of scams.
4. Helps to Turn Your Customers Into Brand Promoters
With inbound marketing, you can turn your customers into brand promoters. If you offer a tremendous value to your customers, they are likely to do business with you for a long time. Not only that, they can share your message via social media platforms or word-of-mouth and bring more leads to your business.
The study has found that over 90% of buyers trust peer recommendations more than advertisements. Besides sharing on social media platforms, you can also offer freebie and commissions to encourage your loyal customers to promote your product. You must have seen how many affiliates make their living by recommending the products that they are using to others.
5. Allows the Salespeople to Spend More Time in Front of Your Audience
By using inbound marketing methods, you can get qualified leads that are more likely to convert. The landing pages and the content that you publish will automatically collect the leads for you.
Your sales team can focus more on sales as most of the inbound lead generation methods are automated. If you are promoting a high-ticket product, the closers in your organization can focus more on tactics to convert the list that are already interested in the company’s offer.
6. Brand Awareness
The users must at least know about your brand before they think of doing business with you. With many affordable inbound marketing methods like content marketing, Facebook advertisement, SEO, and so on, it is possible to have a brand awareness among your targeted audience.
More people being aware of your brand will result in an increased chance of getting more leads. There are specific campaigns on Facebook, SnapChat, and other social media platforms that are particularly for creating brand awareness.
You can retarget your site/page visitors after they are aware of your brand to get more leads.
7. Provide the Right Services to the Right People at the Right Time
Inbound marketing is all about attracting and engaging people, instead of being pushy. The people usually search online or take actions after seeing posts on social media platforms if they are interested in something.
Your posts are available 24/7. If someone is interested in your product/service, they can head over to your offer any time and contact you by leaving their information.
If you provide the right product at the right time to the right people, you are highly likely to get qualified leads that are willing to do business with you.
Final Considerations
Generating leads is crucial for any business to grow. To create a list of potential customers, we need to use some sort of platforms to attract and lure our targeted audience to give away their information. Inbound marketing is a perfect type of marketing that works wonders for companies if appropriately implemented.
I believe the reasons that I gave have convinced you to go for inbound marketing to generate a list of potential customers for your business. Are there any more reasons that you want to add? Let us know your thoughts.
I agree with you absolutely, it however requires a lot of hard work. That’s something many entrepreneurs are not patient enough to learn and get right.