Gone are the old days of advertising which focused on spamming TV ads, billboards, radio or web pages with ad pop-ups. In those days, the loudest and most obnoxious won; it was all brawn and little brain. 21st-century marketing has shifted the paradigm and marketing is a lot more than spam, its niche-focused, on clients who would convert. The term used to describe the marketing technique utilized in today’s digital world is inbound marketing.
Consumer behavior has changed tremendously in the past couple of years, and one reason for this is that today’s digital landscape has become more fragmented and chaotic. Display advertising has become more intrusive than it was two years ago: four out of five persons have been found to abandon a web page because of an auto-playing video or a pop-up. It comes as no surprise that 2016 was a great year for inbound marketing strategies and companies focused more on earning people’s interest rather than buying it.
2017 looks to be an even bigger year for inbound marketing as customers are growing smarter in sourcing for information and reviews on products they desire before making a purchase. The burden of delivery would thus fall on marketers as they have to become both the artist and scientist. As artists, marketers create a variety of appealing contents through visuals, videos and copies to attract customers while involving a host of visualization tools in the analysis of 4W + 1H:
- What are they buying?
- Who are the buyers?
- When are they buying?
- Why are they buying?
- How are they attracted to buy?
As scientists, marketers have to formulate marketing plans based off the results of research and decide on a path for their inbound marketing plan. They have to decide what clients are looking for and based off that predict what they are likely to be in need of in the near future.
2017 is still the year of customer experience, and inbound marketing focuses on enhancing that. Some of the strategies for a successful inbound marketing campaign in 2017 are:
CONTENT REMAINS KING
Due to the saturation of contents, attention spans of customers are getting shorter. Therefore, every word counts as customers glimpse the headline and share accordingly. Video marketing, specifically live videos are going to dominate this year. These videos would be product or demo videos designed to let customers know that their brands are reaching out to their audiences and are approachable to them.
PERSONALIZATION
An essential point in inbound marketing is to create the buyer persona, the fictional and generalized representation of your ideal customer that facilitates your understanding of marketing, sales, product and services. Creating a buyer persona helps you determine what marketing plan to undertake in attracting these customers and what products they would need. Creating a buyer persona saves you the stress of trial and experimentation which would have caused a loss of time and money.
Matching the touching points in the buyer’s journey reinforces the relevance and engagement of the customers. Specific contents give an impression that the brand is tailored to their needs and appeals to customers. Products are important; customer advocacy is essential.
Basically, the best practices for inbound marketing are those which put the end user first and are designed to meet the specific needs which they have.
STRATEGIES for successful inbound marketing include:
- Identifying your buyer persona. By understanding your buyer persona, it means having a realistic view of which buyers would generate the most profit.
- Map out the inbound sales process. Keep improving the content and develop on every touch point. In mapping out the inbound sales process, you should chronicle all the steps you intend to take in achieving you inbound marketing objective. In addition, the content of your inbound marketing plan should be customer-centric. At the same time, it should represent the goals that the company seeks to achieve from the campaign.
- Conversion rate optimization by A/B testing and enhanced call to action. With a well-structured A/B test, you can determine website analytics like bounce rate, user behavior, and problem areas in your website. With this, you can structure your content and web page to convert the clicks into sales. In addition, great call to action would promote visitors who land on your page to purchase your products or services; although you have to be careful not to sound too patronizing as this may in turn produce the opposite effect.
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