3 out of 4 marketers across the globe prioritise an inbound approach to marketing.
It's a fact - and every year more businesses, regardless of industry or company type, are adopting a non-interruptive approach as their core marketing strategy. Hints at the State Of Inbound 2015 Report reaffirmed that inbound marketing is the norm, rather than the exception, with its insights into a global budgeting shift from advertising campaigns to modern inbound marketing tactics.
For marketers, traditional marketing efforts are often futile, and the change to the inbound methodology creates effective marketing strategies that demonstrate value for their efforts and deliver great rewards for their businesses in powerful ways. So it seems perfectly natural for any aspiring marketer to wonder, “What do inbound marketers do differently?” or “How can I achieve better business results with an inbound methodology?”
And if it’s inbound success you’re craving, why not take a sneak peek into habits and best practices of top-of-the-class inbound marketers and discover how you can utilise them to your marketing strategy’s best advantage.
What’s prevalent from the report is that inbound converts, while outbound marketers and even paid customers are increasingly voting outbound - paid advertising in particular - as the most overrated marketing tactic. In fact, companies that move away from traditional marketing and replace it with inbound tactics are three times more likely to see a higher return.
But why is this exactly?
Traditional outbound marketing is centered on reaching out to customers by pushing marketing strategies and efforts at them. This makes it nearly impossible for marketers to accurately measure how many people watch their TV commercial, or drive past their branded billboard on the motorway. Even with radio and newspapers ads, the exact reach and ROI measurements are fuzzy and often grossly inflated.
On the contrary, inbound marketing shows you exactly which marketing efforts are producing paid customers, and tracks ROI right down to the keyword on each marketing campaign. Not to mention the intangible returns you gain from building trust and credibility with your customers.
Take-home: Inbound marketing is a non-invasive and smarter option. No wonder leading marketers fight hard to move away from overrated tactics and to replace them with campaigns that show - and prove - how your marketing activities have contributed to the bottom-line. Besides, there are easier ways to run paid advertising campaigns with HubSpot’s Ads Add-on, which helps you create, manage and leverage ads for inbound marketing. Be sure to check it out.
Regardless of the goals or targets you set out in the beginning of each year, behind every effective marketing strategy is a solid foundation of data. Are you able to demonstrate to your execs exactly how your goals and targets translate into revenue for the business, or how your marketing activities add value to the bottom-line?
Those are the questions that leading marketers have clear answers to when challenged by their execs…thanks to inbound’s holistic approach to tracking and reporting on metrics. Identifying the data that your management team can base strategic business decisions on and tracking campaign performance against your initial objectives ensures long-term success in your inbound marketing endeavors. It does this by pinpointing past successes and failures and using them as a guide to help refine your strategies, identify future goals and ultimately add credibility to the marketing function as a whole.
Take-home: Proactively monitoring your campaign performance – at least 3 or more times per week - will quickly identify initiatives that aren’t adding value to the business. Focus on the areas that deliver the best results and double down on your efforts in those areas. This boosts credibility with your execs, as accurately tracking your activity and generating data helps them make future strategic decisions that deliver even greater returns.
The inbound marketing methodology brings a whole new level of measurement and tracking to marketing! Using the dashboard of a comprehensive marketing software, such as HubSpot, presents you with a bird's-eye view of your ROI metrics in real-time. Inbound marketing also makes clearer KPI measurement possible, empowering you to report on lead attribution, cost per lead, customer lifetime value, lead conversion rates, in addition to identifying which marketing efforts are producing customers.
Leading marketers rely on solid data to back up their claims of delivering adequate ROI to support business objectives. Given the success of inbound in terms of the exponentially better return on investment, it makes sense that execs will be willing to evaluate future budget requests and allocate more of those much needed marketing pounds for campaigns that drive better revenue and results.
Take-home: In the current marketing landscape, where measurement and reporting at a revenue level has become a critical differentiator, it makes sense for marketers to be able to show accurately how marketing activities render results - that matter to the business
Inbound as a methodology is no longer an emerging trend - if you're not considering it, you're simply lagging behind. So take your cues from the smart kids…1) trade the old (outbound) in for a new, modern approach to marketing (inbound) that delivers quantitative results; 2) rely on solid data to make strategic decisions that boost credibility; 3) and measure the metrics that matter to ensure the business reaches its strategic goals in terms of growth, revenue and profit.