The April Networx event focused on how to attract and engage your way to satisfied customers with inbound marketing. Panellists Tyson Cobb from business DEPOT Marketing, Deanna Durisic from Apollo Films and Lucas Meadowcraft from CROFTi discussed concepts and tactics which lead businesses to develop a profitable inbound marketing strategy.
Technology has driven the shift to Inbound Marketing
In today’s world, consumers have the freedom to choose what content they want to consume, as well as when and how they want to consume it. For example, most will favour podcasts over radio, Netflix over TV and Online Publications or even Twitter over Newspaper. Technology has opened new opportunities for brands to connect with customers through inbound marketing, but that also means that traditional is becoming less effective. Inbound marketing and offering value to consumers outside of just a product or service results in the most successful type of ‘pull’ marketing strategies.
Inbound Marketing = Using content to attract, engage and delight customers and then selecting the right technology to facilitate that… 👌🏼 @TysCobb #nxbris #wework
— Emily Forrest (@forrest_effect) April 30, 2019
Content fuels inbound marketing
One of they key pillars of inbound marketing is creating engaging content for your customers. However, with such a saturated market, this isn’t an easy task. In order to attract, engage and delight customers, you need to make sure you’re creating content for the right person. One way to do this is by going out and talking to your customers and extracting information to build your customer persona. You can even go as far as to give them a name so everyone in your business knows what you mean when you’re talking about ‘Ecommerce Emma’. From there, your entire business can make sure that messages, content and platforms used are all focused on reaching that persona.
Tyson Cobb shared an example where businessDEPOT built a customer persona based on people running start-ups, named Start-up Steve. They knew that this customer was short on time and was typically operating as a one-man band, so they needed quick, practical tips and advice on how to grow their business in an easily accessible format. BusinessDEPOT created a series of five-minute videos which were published every week at a time when they knew the content would reach Start-up Steve. They just closed production on the 150 episode series and throughout that time saw high quality leads turn into customers, demonstrating the importance of tailoring your inbound marketing strategy to your ideal customer.
“A lead is not necessarily a lead that’s ready to buy… yet”
A common misconception is that when someone gives you an email address, they are now a customer, but this is not necessarily the case. Once you’ve engaged with your potential audience, the goal is to turn them from just an email address into a ‘hot lead’ by funnelling them through different content pieces and giving them lead scores based on their actions. Lead scores will rank prospective customers based on how much they’ve engaged with your brand or service, for example by visiting your website, searching your location or downloading content, each of these actions will be given a score. This will then determine where this prospective customer is prioritised within your business, what information they receive and when they move from a nurture sequence to a sales cycle.
One approach to turn a potential customer into a ‘hot lead’ is via a segmented email list, which allows you to distribute targeted content to customers based on their interests. Another way is via an app like Haystack, which allows you to receive and share digital business cards for customers or partners that you meet. This will integrate with your CRM so you can feed relevant content to new leads based on the service or product they’re interested in or that you’ve spoken about. It’s all about providing content that’s valuable to your potential customer in order to build trust between them and your brand and eventually lead them to the buying stage.
#nxbris #wework Lucas Meadowcroft, Co-Founder & Chief Visionary Officer, @crofti_ @Croftiptyltd speaking on creating Inbound marketing workflows that add value and builds trust with potential customers. https://t.co/W7xMnAbLch pic.twitter.com/5sCsmGH06z
— Networx Brisbane (@NetworxEvents) April 30, 2019
Make the most of your tools and infrastructure
Finally, part of creating a successful inbound marketing strategy is having an integrated system of tools and technologies that work together. Lucas Meadowcroft says if your technologies aren’t speaking to each other, you’re wasting your money. To put this into a practical sense, Tyson Cobb shared a typical and ideal state for your tool infrastructure, which shows your CRM as the nerve center of everything you do.
#nxbris slide: @tyscobb sharing his thoughts on the kinds of tools and infrastructure needed for inbound marketing https://t.co/PSkMBUuOfA pic.twitter.com/jAUVBgSX9N
— Networx Brisbane (@NetworxEvents) April 30, 2019
That’s a wrap on this month’s Networx! Next month’s event will focus on the ‘Customer Journey’ – featuring tips on how to map your customer journey, advice for managing your team structure and how to remain agile in a changing market.
