So how does inbound marketing lower your marketing costs? There are a variety of ways that inbound marketing can help lower your costs. We will cover the following topics and explain the reasons why this can help lower overall marketing costs.
Most companies are used to the old ways of marketing. Television, Radio, Newspaper, billboard and so on but there’s a huge problem with these mediums other than the fact they are expensive. When it comes to inbound marketing, Testing is the key to everything. This is something that is very difficult to do with outbound marketing. You are reaching out to your audience but, unless you have some kind of special offer, you put a coupon in the newspaper, or have a tracking number then you don’t know who is reacting to your advertisements; so you can’t really judge how effective this strategy is. Other than newspaper, which has a very narrow audience, these mediums are used to raise brand awareness. So unless you use a testing group, you can’t get an instant reaction. Inbound marketing uses different strategies to test different Copy, CTAs and offers. You can quickly make changes to track the results through inbound marketing. To see any results on outbound marketing, you have to watch the results over time. I once heard it takes over 3 months with traditional marketing in order to gain any kind of product recognition. You are just spraying and paying to reach a large amount of people which over half don’t and won’t buy your product/service. Which leads us to our next reason.
Inbound Marketing is Targeted. You aren’t reaching out to these people, they are reaching out to you. So you already know they have an interest in your product. With inbound marketing you can create content around the specific keywords that people would be looking for that are interested in your product. So instead of half of your money going towards people who are never going to buy your product, your money is focused on people that are interested. This is why your cost per lead is cheaper and you receive higher conversion rates. You are reaching less people, but more targeted people. Organizations allowing inbound marketing to dominate their marketing experience a 61% lower cost per lead than those sticking mostly with outbound marketing. Also leads coming by the way of online search are eight times more likely to close compared to outbound leads.
So why are these conversions so much better and cheaper? Well it’s because you are spending less man-power on trying to convert these leads in classic ways like sales people and you are using automated systems called LNCs or Lead Nurturing Campaigns to Nurture your potential clients down the sales funnel. Most products/services are not instant sales. Everybody does research before they buy via the internet, so when you are sending this information to them directly, you are shortening the sales cycle without wasting the time of your sales team. You can slowly move these leads along the sales cycle and finally when you see they are truly a great potential lead, that’s when you send your sales people in to close.
These LNCs also help Raise Your Brand Awareness. Providing value, timeliness and relevant subject matter can take way too much time when creating advertisements for outbound marketing. With inbound marketing, you can constantly change this information to move your business past just simple awareness and push them towards creating a top of mind awareness. That’s why blogs are so important. You can tackle relevant topics and establish yourself as an expert by providing information to what people want and need. More and More people on constantly on their cell phones when trying to find something they need. When they search, are they finding your business? Search Engine Optimization is key to being at the top on all of the search engines and without SEO you can’t raise your brand awareness. These people are looking for you so make sure you can be found.
Lastly, inbound marketing can reduce your marketing costs because you have made a Connection with the Customer. This connection can be used further down in line in order to inform them of new products, addition add-ons to their current product or just inform them of a great deal for a friend. You will still have these contacts in your inbound marketing database so you can go back to them and try to cross sell them or encourage them to purchase your product for a friend. Depending on your business, it is usually less expensive to keep an existing profitable customer than it is to go out and find a new one. So this constant connection with your customer can help residual sales and lower costs due to the expense of trying to acquire another one. Social media is a great way to connect with your customer and build a relationship. It is also a great way to exchange ideas which could end up creating a new product so not only can social media help lower marketing costs, but it could lead to raising profits.
Testing your advertising, targeting your advertising, Nurturing your potential leads, Raising brand awareness, and creating a connection with the customers are all reasons inbound marketing can help lower your marketing costs. Inbound marketing is just a better way to reach out to those potential customers looking for your product. Stop wasting time and money on outbound marketing techniques that can’t reach your full target market. Inbound marketing is the wave of the future and it is here to stay.
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