How to create the ultimate inbound marketing strategy
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The document outlines the necessity for businesses to adopt a flexible inbound marketing strategy in light of upcoming GDPR regulations and changing consumer communication habits, particularly among millennials. It emphasizes the importance of organic lead generation, persona research, and leveraging modern digital channels to build relationships and engage customers creatively. Additionally, it suggests working with marketing agencies to enhance marketing efforts and highlights that a strong inbound strategy is scalable and cost-effective for businesses of all sizes.
How to create the ultimate inbound marketing strategy
- 1. How to create the ultimate inbound marketing strategy
- 2. SIX&FLOW 2 Introduction In this slideshare, we'll cover a lot about how you can accelerate growth with a flexible inbound marketing strategy. But first, we need to get the most obvious argument for inbound out of the way first: changes to EU legislation.
- 3. SIX&FLOW 3 Winter GDPR is coming GDPR is coming. This new EU legislation will still apply to the UK, despite Brexit, and it is set to totally change the way businesses collect data, store it and reach out to prospects. Take marketing company Keurboom, which was fined £400,000 in May 2017 for making nuisance calls; a key example of the way that buying data lists and cold calling are set to be drastically overhauled and possibly even phased out by GDPR.
- 4. SIX&FLOW 4 Be prepared for GDPR It’s about time. GDPR is also timely in reflecting the communication habits of the market which currently holds the world’s largest spending power; millennials. There’s a lot of data out there about how hesitant millennials are to communicate through outbound measures,and how unprepared British businesses across all sectors are for GDPR and its arrival.
- 5. SIX&FLOW 5 Collect leads organically The outbound marketing process is more than likely to become even more tricky now that Article 50 has been officially been triggered. The solution? Building an inbound marketing strategy that futureproofs your company from market conditions similar to these, attracts leads in a totally organic and natural way, collects data and personal information from people with their specific consent, and allows you to engage with and nurture those leads in fun, honest and creative ways.
- 6. SIX&FLOW 6 Make your marketing work Every company markets itself whether it means to or not. A sign outside a shop is marketing. A leaflet is marketing. Having a Facebook page is marketing. Them merely existing does little, though; you need your marketing to work for you to justify its cost, attract new leads and grow your business. We believe the absolute best way to do this – especially in the digital era – is with a bespoke, creative inbound marketing strategy.
- 7. SIX&FLOW 7 Outbound marketing’s decline has been apparent for years, especially when there’s information out there that suggests the right inbound marketing strategy can provide triple the ROI than an outbound campaign for less money. Outbound is on the out
- 8. SIX&FLOW 8 Working with a creative agency to build a unique inbound marketing strategy has also seen countless brands boost their local presence, expand into international territories and capture niche markets, all in fun, engaging ways that snare the absolute best parts of various digital channels such as search, social, email and many others. Build a unique inbound marketing campaign
- 9. SIX&FLOW 9 What is it about inbound marketing that we feel makes it the ultimate form of marketing for small businesses looking to grow, SMEs looking to engage better with their clients and larger brands who want to improve the quality and volume of their targeted leads? Start from scratch
- 10. SIX&FLOW 10 Inbound marketing is the ultimate blend For us, inbound marketing is the ideal blend of traditional and modern marketing trends. Traditional marketing practices such as focusing on building strong relationships, earning trust amongst the industry and with clients, and having a strong brand image. The problem a lot of traditional marketers have is that they may have an excellent picture of who they want to attract and what makes them tick, but struggle to reach out to them.
- 11. SIX&FLOW 11 That’s where a strong inbound marketing strategy can help by pairing those honest values with modern digital channels and the targeting options they provide to attract those markets organically without interrupting them in their daily lives. Attract markets without interruption
- 12. SIX&FLOW 12 Instead of cold calling prospects, you could take advantage of emerging technologies such as mobile messenger apps to open a dialogue with the leads that matter most to you. If your market is one that enjoys visuals though and is more likely than not to be glued to a smartphone, than that budget may be better spent on platforms like Snapchat to engage with leads and nurture them. Take advantage of emerging tech
- 13. SIX&FLOW 13 Use research in creative ways Before committing your budget to any specific channels though we must point out the most important part of any and every inbound marketing strategy: persona research and discovering your market’s movements.
- 14. SIX&FLOW 14 Persona research is by far and away one of the most important parts of an inbound marketing strategy. The better you research your market, its movements, what excites it, what your competitors are doing and other factors, the more successful your growth marketing strategy is likely to be. Research equates to success
- 15. SIX&FLOW 15 That can even go as far as inclusivity. There are 11 million disabled people in the UK today according to research published by Marketing Week. Is your brand an inclusive and a progressive voice in your industry, creating content and targeting qualified leads with a campaign that everybody can be involved in? Be an inclusive and progressive voice
- 16. SIX&FLOW 16 Your inbound marketing strategy and philosophy is more than generating leads and converting sales. It’s also one of the best ways to give your brand a real voice, helping you to engage with people from across all backgrounds who may have an interest in who you are and what you have to say. That’s a tactic that can be especially useful for smaller businesses and start-ups who want to make a real impact on their industry if they use the right channels relevant to their market to attract positive attention and start a conversation. Give your brand a voice
- 17. SIX&FLOW 17 Many start-ups may already have started to create an inbound presence for their company. They may have heard about the benefits of content marketing and are blogging, but are disappointed that their efforts aren’t generating as much interest as they’d like. There are businesses on the other side of the coin too; people who have an incredibly successful blog that’s generating a lot of traffic which, sadly, isn’t exploring the rest of the business or converting sales. Convert sales and generate hot leads
- 18. SIX&FLOW 18 That doesn’t just go for blogging, but for other creative methods of content generation designed to entertain a market and encourage them to make a purchase at the same time. Video marketing is one of the most explosive and potentially lucrative ways to generate fresh leads for an inbound marketing strategy, but how do you bridge the gap between video and purchase? Successfully direct your traffic
- 19. SIX&FLOW 19 For the immediate future and beyond, video marketing campaigns are going to represent an enormous amount of internet traffic for brands who decide to invest. Despite that though not everyone may be totally enamoured by watching videos on a smartphone. It may be more of a millennial and centennial thing; what do you do if you’re a business looking to attract more niche markets who, say, devote their time to podcasts and other forms of internet media? Get onboard with video marketing
- 20. SIX&FLOW 20 Content creation should be a critical part of any and every inbound marketing strategy, but it can’t work alone. You may have created the most amazing, interesting and engaging marketing visuals in the world but it means nothing if people can’t find them and – most importantly – if they don’t direct people to the next stage of your strategy with calls to action that encourage leads to perform a certain task. Content is king
- 21. SIX&FLOW 21 Conversions don’t just happen. An essential part of the process revolves around lead nurturing and tipping leads over the parapet with creative content and incentives that simply can’t be ignored. Play your cards right and you can also potentially resurrect dead leads with a creative inbound marketing strategy that reaches out to people who may be willing to give your business another chance. Leads don’t nurture themselves
- 22. SIX&FLOW 22 Not many people know about Reddit for instance but it’s the largest place on the internet to discover user-generated content and a channel that can help you to go viral if that’s something important to you and the message is right. Again though, research your personas. It makes little sense to waste time creating content for Reddit and its various communities that may have little interest in what you have to offer. Give Reddit a go
- 23. SIX&FLOW 23 Instead it could be worth exploring partnerships with influencers and micro-influencers; rising and established stars with a strong digital and social presence that can reach out to your target audience in transparent ways to let people know you exist on an almost-instant basis. Again this serves to highlight the changing face of digital marketing, how quickly trends can be adopted and how beneficial a flexible inbound marketing strategy is to attracting your market. Explore partnerships
- 24. SIX&FLOW 24 It’s important to stress that a highly flexible inbound marketing strategy shouldn’t be a one-off and must constantly evolve with your market in consistent ways. That means planning ahead with your content; doing something on an annual basis such as at times like Valentine’s Day can keep you in the minds of potential customers and encourage them to buy during special events, while getting on board with major events such as the Olympics also helps brands to capture the feel-good factor and helps them get noticed in creative ways. Flexible inbound marketing is important
- 25. SIX&FLOW 25 Researching your audience, creating content for it, reaching out to it over the right channels and nurturing those leads is just a small part of the inbound process. The inbound process
- 26. SIX&FLOW 26 Different businesses measure success in different ways, though. For serious business growth, to improve the quality of your leads and convert more of you what you offer on a consistent basis, it pays to indulge in big data, calculate and visualise your analytics on a regular basis to adjust your inbound marketing strategy and reduce your costs while the organic side of your campaign takes hold. Indulge in big data
- 27. SIX&FLOW 27 This is where working with a marketing agency to complement your inbound marketing strategy can really pay off when it comes to business growth, especially for SMEs. Time is tight; you need to dedicate as much of yourself to the most important aspects of your business. It’s why you hired staff; can you really ask them to do things like keyword research, manage the marketing budget and reach out to prospects over social media on top of their own jobs? Time is tight; outsource your marketing
- 28. SIX&FLOW 28 A good inbound marketing agency will work alongside you to offer creative inbound solutions to business growth, allowing you to focus on the areas of your business that matter most to you and your staff whilst taking advantage of the knowledge brought by a team dedicated to building an inbound marketing strategy that works for you. An inbound strategy that works for you
- 29. SIX&FLOW 29 Good agencies can also work with businesses on a consultancy basis to give businesses an overview of how the inbound process can benefit the entire company, bring different departments together and get them working from the same page with an inbound marketing strategy that’s easy for everybody to understand. Sales and marketing departments, for instance, are both working toward the same goal but are wildly different floors. Inbound marketing can help bring them closer together and work in a more harmonious way. Get departments working from the same page
- 30. SIX&FLOW 30 That’s a hell of a lot of things that a good inbound marketing strategy can do. It must be expensive then, especially for small businesses with a tight budget looking to grow? It’s an understandable train of thought but also one that highlights the beauty of a strong and flexible inbound marketing strategy. A good strategy is entirely scalable and cost-effective for your needs. Inbound marketing is cost-effective
- 31. SIX&FLOW 31 At the same time, preparing the right message and working hard to identify the right personas means that small amounts of your budget can go into biddable media techniques such as paid search and social targeting to almost-instantly get in front of parts of your audience that you believe are most likely to convert to improve your ROI. Instantly get in front of the right audience
- 32. SIX&FLOW 32 Once that ROI starts to look positive, you could put more budget into the biddable part of your campaign or keep the ship steady while the organic part of your inbound marketing strategy takes hold to capture more relevant leads in natural ways. Capture more relevant leads in natural ways
- 33. SIX&FLOW 33 There’s one key rule of inbound marketing though; the more you put into it the more you get out of it. One blog every now and then won’t cut it, for instance. For those with serious growth ambitions who want to reach new heights quickly, biddable media will be an essential part of your success. The more you put in the more you get out
- 34. SIX&FLOW 34 Trusting those campaigns with an experienced team well versed in creative organic marketing and other techniques such as biddable media management is the best way to discover parts of your market that you didn’t know existed, reach out to them without annoying them, nurture them, engage with them, build long-term relationships and convert sales in painless ways that will encourage them to come back to your business time and time again. Trust is key
- 35. SIX&FLOW 3 5 Want more information? Get in touch. BOOK A MEETING WITH US
- 36. SIX&FLOW 3 6