Techblog
10 Reasons why you need to start looking at Inbound Marketing
By guest contributor, Marcus Ho.
Over the years since the internet has become the main arena for business, there have only been two kinds of marketing methods - inbound marketing and outbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers. As an inbound marketer, you need to "earn your way" to your customers’ wallets, in contrast to outbound marketers who have to "buy, beg, or bug their way in". On the other hand, Outbound marketing includes marketing campaigns like traditional advertising, telemarketing, cold approaching on the streets and buying e-mail databases.
While outbound marketing remains to be functional, inbound marketing has proven to be more useful these days. This is because inbound marketing has opened various avenues for businesses to reach out to their target markets without actually making direct contact. Inbound marketing has also offered practicality and convenience, something outbound marketing procedures could not provide.
Here are 10 valuable reasons as to why you should start looking at inbound marketing today:
- Increased consumer engagement
In inbound marketing, you not only sell your products and services; you also attend to your market's needs. Through different inbound marketing techniques, you get to have a better grasp of your consumers’ needs as they get to engage with your brand's activities. They get to participate in your contests, voice out their issues, and provide their own commendations right on the dot. - Digital asset integration
When marketing your business, your assets you reap not only comprise of the money that you make; it also takes the form of consumer experience and continued patronage. In short, you get to keep your customers in the community that you’ve built over time. - Resource efficiency
When using inbound marketing, you have greater control over the networks in which you allocate your marketing resources. You can then monitor their performance and tweak accordingly, to maximise your returns at minimum cost. - Netizen populations continue to grow
In Singapore alone, around 55.7% of the country's population is now using various social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. Using Facebook alone as an inbound marketing tool for this audience can already boost your sales by up to 50% because you get to expose your brand and business directly to your target consumer group. The same goes with other countries especially around Asia, such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. - Instant target reach
In consumer psychology, consumers are more inclined to make a purchase if they are able to test the products and businesses right away. If they have to make extra effort just to get a sample, they get discouraged in trying out the brand. Inbound marketing thus provides convenience through the use of social media. Audiences may not be able to hold your product right away, but they can check out your offers and promos within a few clicks. They also find this convenient because get to play around your fan page easily as it's within their social network's ecosystem. - Ads are cheaper
How much does it cost to have an ad printed on a newspaper? How much do you have to spend for a TV commercial? In contrast, you can create simple ads and launch them on Facebook for a price that's way cheaper than you expected. You can even target these ads based on the interests that relate to your business, so that users of those interests get to see what your own brand has to offer too. And yes, you can recycle these ads whenever they prove useful again. Yes, inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead as compared to traditional marketing methods. - Inbound marketing has gone mobile
This is what you have to take advantage of - with the presence of social media applications on mobile devices, you can easily reach out to your target audiences not necessarily through ads, but by means of content. Short and simple status updates make them well-informed about your business, and in turn check out your offers wherever they may be. - Content spreads like wildfire
Content marketing is simple and easy, and when used properly it could bring you the customers that you’ve been looking for all this time. This is because your posts are not only exposed within the Facebook ecosystem itself; it can be followed on Twitter, and reposted in social media aggregators such as Reddit and Digg, thus increasing your target reach. - Inbound marketing allows you to nurture your leads
Through inbound marketing, you not only get to generate leads; you also get to nurture them while attending to your buying sector. By keeping them updated with your posts and tweets, your fans and followers find more reason to spend for your products and services not just because they feel the need to do so, but more importantly because they feel like doing so. - Inbound marketing makes your brand more relevant
You know what makes a user leave a blog or website? Irrelevant ads. Through inbound marketing however, you are able to project your brand to be important mainly because you ride on your audiences’ interests and not the other way around. They find it more enticing to check out your offers because they are already interested to begin with.
Marcus is the Director of Social Media Hub; and a local social media agency that focuses on converting conversations to customers. Some of their clients include Qatar Airways, JobStreet, Wacoal, and few government politicians. Many of his corporate clients have made history in the social media industry by generating over a million dollars in revenue solely through social media.
He is also the author of the book Secrets to Facebook Marketing, which has been a national bestseller in Singapore and Malaysia.