What Your Boss Wants to Know About Inbound Marketing
We talk a lot about buzzphrases here at Top Hat IMC.
Besides integrated marketing communications, inbound marketing seems to one of the most popular buzzphrases rising to the top of business conversations. This has many bosses asking their staff to evaluate whether or not inbound marketing is right for their organization.
Here’s what your boss wants to know about inbound marketing:
1.) What is inbound marketing?
Think of traditional marketing as an interruptive “push” and inbound marketing as an attractive “pull.”
Inbound marketing is digital methodology aimed at attracting prospective customers with well-researched, keyword content perpetuated with blogging, social media, website and search engine optimization and other related tactics.
The process specifically involves attracting, converting, closing and delighting.
2.) Do we need to use inbound marketing?
Since inbound marketing strategically utilizes blogging, keywords, website and search engine optimization in a single effort, every business in any industry can benefit from it.
Inbound marketing should be well considered as businesses evaluate bringing in and maintaining prospective customers. It’s also useful to help generate qualified leads for your sales department.
3.) How hard is it to implement?
Most organizations are already using a variety of inbound marketing tactics without even knowing it.
Social media and email marketing are among the most common pieces of inbound marketing that are already being used. All that is required is an additional, overarching strategy. With that strategy, some keyword research and general education about inbound marketing, your business can quickly integrated it into its overall structure.
4.) What are the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that Inbound uses?
Inbound marketing comes with a defined, and easily measurable set, of KPIs. They are:
- Average Monthly Visitors to Your Website
- Average Leads Per Month from Your Site
- Percentage of Qualified Leads
- Close Rate
- Customer Lifetime Value
When you look at these, you can quickly project the effectiveness of inbound marketing. Any increase in monthly visitors, the qualified leads or close rate equals an increase in bottomline revenue.
- Use the Inbound Revenue Calculator to see what inbound can do for you
5.) How difficult is it to measure?
Not difficult at all, especially since the KPIs are clearly defined and measured.
In fact, among marketing, advertising and public relations strategies, inbound marketing is one of the easiest to measure. Most platforms–such as HubSpot and WordPress plugins–have built-in analytical tools that are surgically precise.
You can track you inbound leads based on the pages they viewed, how long they viewed each one and the overall inbound efficiency equation (site visits > sales leads > actual sales).