The Inbound Marketing Methodology is all about creating scalable, predictable revenue growth. The methodology works by:
- Attract: Attracting strangers to turning them into visitors (through content or website)
- Convert: Impressing visitors to get them to convert into leads
- Close: Begin and nurture relationships with leads to close sales and become clients
- Delight: Delighting clients, so they become promoters and ambassadors of your brand
Lead Generation Content
Most companies are totally dropping the ball when it comes to converting their visitors. They typically have two-to-four places on their entire website where someone can raise their hand to convert to a lead.
In today’s modern buyer’s journey, where personalization is expected, you cannot get by with simply having two to four places on your website where someone can convert into a lead. Your website should have lots of lead-generation content.
Segmenting Leads
Lead generation is not enough. You need to segment your leads based on who they are and where they are in their buyer’s journey. You can use additional content and context of who they are to accelerate them through the buyer’s journey.
The additional content will help to segment more of your leads into sales-qualified or sales-accepted leads, accelerate those sales-accepted leads into opportunities, and then ultimately, close them into new clients.
Client Retention
New clients are not the endgame in any company that is based on repeat business or recurring revenue. You need to ensure you are delighting clients through means of customer marketing, upselling, or cross-selling--which should be done with an educational approach. It is not a matter of pitching; it is a matter of teaching them about what they should give thought to.
When you do a great job educating clients, clients will become promoters and bring your business, new strangers.
Marketing Funnel for MQL
The recent fundamental shift in marketing has prompted a new marketing funnel to be born. The new funnel supports the modern buyer and is catered 100% to them, with the intent of turning strangers into customers and promoters.
Marketers have made some improvements to the traditional marketing funnel based on the modern buyer. Companies do not want just any traffic directed to their website; they want the right traffic, influencers, and decision-makers. By implementing this new methodology, marketers, sales professionals, chief revenue officers, and CEOs can attract the right kinds of prospects and visitors to their websites through things like:
- Blogging
- Keywords
- Topics
- Optimizing website pages (through buyer personas)
- Concepts their audience cares about
- Conversion paths
- Lead generation content
- Social publishing (secondary signal to search engines)
Once you attract website visitors, the next phase of the funnel is to collect the visitor's contact information to convert them into a lead.
Premium Content
To get someone to give you their business card information, you cannot just say, “subscribe to our newsletter,” that is like a 1999 move. There is no novelty to subscribing to a newsletter anymore, and it is the same thing for your “Contact Us” page; unless someone is ready to talk to sales, they are not going to fill out your “Contact Us” page.
Setting up forms, calls-to-action, landing pages, and a centralized database that captures who is interested in your premium content is optimal for converting visitors into leads. These conversion paths allow prospects to raise their hand and give you their business card information in exchange for the premium content on the other side of your landing page. By converting visitors into leads in this way, it does not disrupt the modern buyer’s journey.
The above tactics allow you to capture their information, so you can build a relationship with them, educate them, and build trust over time to have that trusted advisor relationship. As you go along, with the right tools and software, you should also be able to learn a ton about who they are and what they care most about.
Bottom Line
Successful inbound marketers know they must map out their content based on the modern buyer’s journey. These funnels must be personalized by buyer persona and where they are in the buyer’s journey. When inbound campaigns are done right, they will receive a much higher return on investment than traditional outbound marketing campaigns.
Sales must question and reassess their whole approach, and playbook, and evolve to meet and surpass modern buyer expectations.
How is your marketing team supporting your company’s revenue goals? Let us know in the Comments below.
To learn more about using segmentation, personalization, the marketing funnel for marketing-qualified leads, and premium content to support client retention, enroll now in our free 7-day eCourse: Go-to-Market Strategy 101 for B2B SaaS Startups and Scaleups.
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