When companies decide decide to start an Inbound marketing strategy, they put articles, videos, podcast, infographics online … in order to generate qualified leads. Actually, 61% of B2B buyers start their shopping day with a search on Google. It will then be up to your sales force to turn them into customers, and / or if you have a merchant website to sell online.
Companies are using this technique more and more, to attract new leads. Thus, 86 million blog posts are published each month. It also means that the online war of information is declared, and that to stand out, it takes
– a professional approach and
– to understand the specificity of online communication.
Inbound communication is different from the one made with medias such as leaflets, catalogs, posters. It consists of putting online a valuable and relevant information, and offering a solution to the pain points of your target. Only 91% of marketers say they practice Inbound marketing, but 23% say they are « very disappointed » with the results.
Here is a list (non-exhaustive) of the reasons for failure with Inbound strategy:
- Unilaterally promote a product or a service: Publishing content online means understanding a basic rule: your content is there to answer a user’s request, not to advertise! The tone with which you will respond should be informative, humorous or inspiring. It is not the place to put an ad online.
- Does not target an audience: To have a useful content, you need to know to whom your content is addressed. In an Inbound marketing strategy, the first step is to know who are the players in the market, and which segment you will target. In that sense, the marketing approach has not changed with the advent of digital.
- Does not answer a problem of your targeted audience: Your content is here to answer a problem of your target. If you want to be found, your article must respond to what the user is looking for. That’s why targeting is so important to understand what can drive your target to make a query with a search engine
- Do not use the search engine database: When you are ready to publish content, you need to know with which keywords your target is doing its queries. Tools like Google trends or Google keywords planner will tell you the monthly frequency at which keywords are searched, and whether they are on an increasing or decreasing trend.
- Do not invite to engagement: If you make content, it is not only to add additional pages to the 100 billion ones that are already online. You must also invite your target to interact, either by commenting, sharing, or getting in touch with you.
- Does not contain any source: Internet is a place of exchange, you must enrich your articles from other points of view, to show that you know how to enrich your opinion with the opinions of other experts.
- Does not measure results: this is one of the main reasons for failure of an Inbound marketing strategy. Before starting an Inbound campaign, you need to know which performance indicators you will choose to know if what you are doing is beneficial or not. Among the performance indicators, there are:
-the number of qualified leads generated,
-the number of subscription to a newsletter,
-the number of phone calls,
-the evolution of the traffic on your website
-…
It is very important to take the time to define and follow them throughout the Inbound campaign.
By avoiding these mistakes, you will maximize your chances of success to generate new leads, and thus provide your business new customers. We are at your disposal to assist you in this online presence adventure, to see with you, how to establish your internet expert status.
Renaud Vuillet