3 Secrets To Inbound Marketing Success

The Colin Powell quote really sums up the work of any inbound marketing campaign.  It takes preparation and hard work to start an inbound marketing process and it takes failure to redefine your marketing efforts to be successful. In this article, we will cover the 3 tactics you should be using to ensure inbound marketing success.  Building a bridge between marketing and sales, focusing on creating brand advocates and becoming an information hub are just some of the hidden keys to inbound marketing success.

Talk to Sales

One of the most obvious problems in any marketing campaign today is the lack of communication between the marketing department and sales department.  The core of inbound marketing is around statistics and results.  The only way to improve your marketing efforts is by knowing its results.  The only way to do this is by communicating with sales.  You need to know who closed in ordered to improve your campaign.  If you create 5 different campaigns and only 1 is converting, then why would you keep the other 4 campaigns the same?  Stop throwing money down the drain and start changing these failed attempts.

Another problem between sales and marketing is that they often have perceived different things about the customer.  The strategy between marketing and sales is not unified.  Your sales team is on the front line while your marketing team is working in the back so ultimately they will develop unique and varying perceptions.  You have to break down the marketing and sales silos and build a bridge to actively manage the sharing of customer data. The sales team has a large amount of customer information that has not been sorted through that the marketing team would love to hear about.  This information can be used in many different ways from advance content to blogging ideas.  Our best blogging topics come from customer questions so building an effective bridge between sales and marketing is vital to uncover effective ways to target your customers.      

Focus on Creating Advocates

Word of Mouth is still the most powerful marketing tactic available.  The only problem is that you can’t just create Word of Mouth, you have to influence it.  Focusing on creating brand advocates can be very beneficial to your marketing and tends to be a secret in the inbound marketing arena.  Google’s SEO places a large importance on social activities.  The more shares, retweets and likes you have can lead to much higher rankings because Google notices people are sharing this information and deems it valuable.  Plus the more your content is liked, shared or retweeted will give it a better opportunity to be seen by a larger audience, so building brand advocates is important.  

Figuring out how to build brand advocates is a whole different ball game.  First you must realize the difference between satisfaction and passion.  Find out what your consumers are truly passionate about in your products and that’s where the word of mouth will come from.  Phone advocates love the features so when you highlight these features on social media, you are more likely to receive shares, retweets and likes.  Also make sure you have multi-communication channels set up (socials).  Make it easy for your customers to interact with your brand, map out the customer touchpoints and start interacting with these customers. Your socials are there to create engagement with customers and this relationship will build advocates if you encourage passionate customers to share.        

Become an Information Center

Everybody knows that information is the focal point of inbound marketing success, but is your company really becoming an information center for your industry.  The extent of your information is very important with inbound marketing.  You can’t just create a few blogs every month and one or two pieces of advance content every year and assume you are doing enough.  Honestly, you will never be able to do enough, the more information the better.  Your goal should be becoming known as the online EXPERT of your industry.  As you do your normal day-to-day activities, you need to be thinking would this answer a question for just 1 consumer?  Would this benefit just 1 Customer?  If it would be beneficial then put that content out there.

Becoming an information center means you need to be providing information in every area that your audience may look. Make sure you are using all the socials, blogging, and creating new content for your site.  You have to give your audience what they want, when they want it so constantly be aware of what they are asking. Pay attention to your socials and answer your fans questions and then place a link at the end offering more information. This won’t be the only person looking for this question and a great response could do wonders for sending people to your site. Engagement is important in this new era of SEO since Google takes shares, likes and retweets into consideration. In this day of age, you are not talking at them anymore, you are having a conversation and as the old saying goes “Before you speak, listen, before you write, think”.  Follow this rule with your content/answers and you will be just fine.

Conclusion

There are no hidden secrets that will create inbound marketing success, but working with your sales team, creating advocates and becoming an information center will help you become more successful.  Work on these tactics for your site and you will see improvements, but just remember that preparation, hard work, and learning from your failures is the only full proof way to become successful.