Are you a small business owner, looking to use the internet to accomplish your business dreams? The internet is a powerful tool that has dramatically changed the way your customers can shop and buy. As a business, you should understand these changes and finetune your business approach to keep in tandem with your customers.
However, old marketing methods that were used for winning customers may today lead you only to business failure. As a small business, you need to understand and unleash the power of inbound marketing. Read on to find out what inbound marketing is and how it can impact your business.
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Small business and how inbound marketing may help
Inbound marketing isn’t a very new thing. All the way back in 2006, Moz was already proclaiming it as a new dawn for how future online marketing will be done. For small businesses, this approach can give them the headstart they need to conquer new coveted markets.
Studies show that inbound marketing can acquire you the same amount of leads at only 30% of the budget used through traditional methods. This means that whether you are a small business or a big business you absolutely need to give inbound marketing some consideration. And if you are a small business, you will be making a costly mistake by ignoring even what big established businesses are paying attention to win in the online space.
What is inbound marketing and how its targeted approach is a winner
The best way to understand inbound marketing is by contrasting it with outbound marketing, which is its opposite. Outbound marketing is more about going for your clients yourself. Inbound marketing is about customers coming over to you themselves.
As you may have guessed, the latter seems more attractive to your prospects. After all, who enjoys getting bombarded with cold emails, pop up ads, etc which outbound marketing usually entails? It can be annoying and most people get turned off by it.
It is no wonder that this in-your-face approach used by outbound marketing converts far less traffic. Outbound marketing has been described as a disruptive approach of winning customers and it is being superseded by inbound marketing.
Inbound marketing focuses on building natural traffic by offering products and content that people already want. Outbound marketing differs here by trying to push content or products that people don’t want. This makes inbound marketing much more targeted.
Small business challenges now more manageable through inbound marketing
As a small business, you may find that the highly competitive internet space can be a tough place to survive in. Consider these obstacles that small businesses need to overcome for success. The good news is that all of these can be smartly dealt with through inbound marketing.
Attracting traffic: Attracting traffic is the number one goal for your small business. With good volumes of traffic, you stand a good chance to generate leads which means higher revenue potential. But winning online traffic can be tough which is why small businesses should turn to inbound marketing.
Quality leads from inbound marketing: Even if you can get good traffic, it will count for little if most of your leads eventually don’t convert into customers or subscribers. It is also wasteful of your resources. This often happens if you are getting irrelevant traffic with poor quality leads that are not properly matched with your products. Inbound marketing can be the magic to help you fetch high-quality leads.
Inbound marketing and ROI: Inbound marketing methodology has actually been linked with higher ROI for both bigger companies and small businesses. So for financially savvy online businesses, this the smarter way to put your dollars to good use. For you as a small business, this is even better considering your limited resources.
Social platforms options: The internet abounds with many social media platforms, which is certainly a boon for small businesses. What makes inbound marketing so attractive is it’s a great fit for social media, given it’s conversational and engaging nature. By engaging social media with your inbound marketing, your business can reap tons of valuable insights from its customers which can help shape and improve future content.
Customer retention: Can you hold onto your customers for long or will they walk away? This is key to you as a small business to survive amid the intense competition. To run your business successfully, you need long term relationships with your customers to enhance your future prospects.
How can inbound marketing help small businesses
There are dozens of ways inbound marketing can boost your online small business.
Inbound marketing costs a lot less: If you don’t want to bust your budget, you will want to switch from outbound marketing to inbound marketing. This is great for smaller businesses that typically have smaller budgets to spare.
Personalization: Another thing that sets inbound marketing apart, is its personalization. Since your product or content is highly targeted, they have a more personal touch or appeal to your customers or website visitors.
Quality leads: Inbound marketing is also valued for its capacity to generate your quality leads. Since you are getting traffic naturally to whom your products are well optimized, your leads are more likely to convert
Focuses on the customer: Inbound marketing is appealing because it is oriented more towards the customer rather than the business. It seeks to attract, engage and delight the customer with fantastic content that the customer can relate to.
Evergreen content: Since inbound marketing is focused on creating content that attracts, engages and delights the customers, it is naturally geared to maintaining the freshness of content.
The content is of high quality because it stays relevant for long and is not just a one-off. Such timeless content as Pro blogger Hakshay Allur calls it is perfect for SEO tactics since it has long term relevance.
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