Have you ever been cold called by a stranger pushing and pushing to sell you something you don’t need? Calling back every day or two? Does all the junk mail arriving at your house every week go straight to the recycle bin?
Traditional sales, or outbound marketing, is all about throwing a general message out to as many people as possible whether they wanted anything to do with your company or not. Flyers, popups, cold calls, junk email and more. For 99% of us, this creates a constant inundation of useless information we never asked for, never looked for, or wanted anything to do with. Not the best way to create happy new followers or customers.
By stark contrast, inbound marketing looks to create a relationship with potential customers by sharing valuable information, answering questions and providing useful and meaningful content. Once a new visitor sees some value in interacting with your company, they are more easily convinced that you are someone they can be comfortable doing business with. So, why hire a marketing agency that specializes in inbound marketing? The benefits are endless.
By creating this relationship with potential buyers, your sales team won’t actually have to sell because the customer has already decided they trust your company on some level. So your sales team gets access to all these warm doors. Sounds a lot better than what you are doing right now, right? (And trust me, we have a lot of data to show you how much more money companies can make with this approach, like this.)
In fact, by using inbound strategies, you might get rid of your cold calling department altogether and end up hiring more sales agents because you won’t be throwing messages to strangers who aren’t looking for you (that’s another data point we can prove to you).
Your new goal is for your team to work primarily with qualified leads who have interacted with your company and chosen to take the next steps by either asking for more information or going directly to purchasing a product.
If you're not already convinced, the costs associated with outbound marketing are astronomical when compared to inbound marketing. What's more, if you're just getting started with an inbound marketing strategy, hiring an inbound marketing agency gets you 7 expert staff for the price of one new team member (like a VP of Marketing or CMO), and lays the foundation for continuous growth, with no lengthy onboarding process or staff training.
How Inbound Marketing Works and Why You Need an Inbound Marketing Agency
The phrase “inbound marketing” began with HubSpot in 2006. To understand how an inbound marketing agency can help grow your business, let's first take a look at what it is in easy to understand terms and why HubSpot’s inbound marketing is so effective for online businesses.
The inbound marketing method is radically different and incredibly powerful. In its simplest form, inbound marketing is finding people who are already interested in your product and helping them by providing valuable information or solving a problem they may have. By creating relationships with potential customers, you earn their trust and respect, making them more likely to want to do business with you.
Simply put: Using Hubspot software, you will be able to generate more website traffic and have better leads which in turn bring more sales.
There are 4 steps involved in Hubspot’s inbound marketing:
1. Attract: when inbound marketing is being implemented correctly, it will drive traffic to your website. Attract the right people to your website by providing great content directed at a specific niche persona. This content is information they are actively seeking, but you can also provide answers to questions they haven’t even thought to ask yet. The right inbound marketing strategy will continue to bring customers back to your website because they found useful information on their first visit.
2. Convert: with each of their return visits, converting leads into customers gets a little bit easier. They're expressing interest in your business, and by continuing to supply useful content you will be able to open up communication with your future leads. With the right call to action and properly designed landing pages on your website, you will see your email subscription list grow.
3. Close: making leads into customers is much more efficient with inbound marketing. Leads have had ongoing communication with your business, either through blogs, social media, website content or even direct communication. By maximizing your use of HubSpot with an inbound marketing agency, you will reap all the benefits of inbound marketing has to offer, and more importantly, be able to focus on your business rather than spending time and energy learning how to create and implement the right content. And with this content infrastructure, your sales team will never again have to end a “just checking in” email to prospects. Instead, with every email, your sales team can send impactful, engaging communication, all while tracking its impact and results. Much more powerful for the customer and efficient for the salesperson, right?
4. Delight: once your customers have gone through the buying journey and have had an exceptional experience with your business, they'll tell their friends. Now they have reached the "delight" step of inbound marketing. And when it's time to buy again, they won’t forget their experience because you’ll stay top of mind with them by offering timely, helpful content that doesn't overwhelm their inbox.
The future of marketing and the role of inbound marketing is looking bright. At Tangible Words, we have been lucky to see the benefits of implementing inbound marketing across a wide variety of markets and niches.
So Why Hire a Marketing Agency that Specializes In Inbound?
- Get 7 marketing professionals for the price of 1 new staff member — and create a marketing plan for ongoing growth.
- Save time and focus on your business and customers, especially if you use a HubSpot Agency Partner.
- Stop wasting time and money creating random advertising directed at EVERYONE and focus only on those already interested in your product.
- Put your sales team to work closing qualified leads rather than trying to convince strangers to buy.
- Focus only on qualified leads and don’t annoy everyone with products and services they aren’t interested in.
- Create an army of satisfied customers who spread the love for your company and in turn generate more leads organically.
- Get to know your customers and provide value for them by learning what interests them.
- By creating new products or services based on the needs of your existing customers, you'll benefit from cross-sales and new opportunities.
- By learning and following your customer trends, you will gain insight into what other services they may be interested in.
- Benefit from a team of experts in their field(s) who can save you time and money by creating focused campaigns and reaching interested prospects.
Recently, Tangible Words was awarded the HubSpot Integration Innovation Award, recognizing the way we integrate HubSpot tools to benefit our clients and help with getting the most out of HubSpot.
Tangible Words clients have seen an increase in website traffic by 29% and a massive increase in social media traffic by 230%. As a certified partner of HubSpot, Tangible Words has also seen the sales cycle shortened with better quality leads provided. There really is nothing like seeing the success clients have with hiring Tangible Words to implement the inbound methodology. From website design, to copywriting and social media, Tangible Words, an award winning agency, is 100% focused on you seeing results and solving real sales problems.
If you want to see more data on everything in this article — book time with our team to hash out your concerns, objections and curiosities.
