How Inbound Marketing Shortens Sales Cycles and Improves Profits
One of the most attractive things about inbound marketing is the increase in traffic it can deliver to your website. The more content you produce, the more traffic you’ll receive. The more traffic you receive, the more links you get. The more links you get, the greater the chance of landing on the first page of Google – the Holy Grail of cyberspace.
Another cool thing about blogging is that the public starts to look at you as the thought leader of your industry. Since I started blogging for my basement waterproofing company, I have benefitted greatly by receiving media attention that cost me nothing.
You know what’s the coolest thing about blogging? It saves time and makes your business more profitable. How’s that? Let’s use my internet marketing business as an example.
Since I launched Inbound Storm, I’ve received a number of inquiries from both friends and business associates. All were pretty similar in nature. They wanted to know how soon they could get on the first page of Google, if people would really be interested in reading their blogs or what it would take for them to jump ahead of their respective competitors. In each case, I had already written blog posts that answer the question. (Be sure to click the preceding links if you want the answers).
How Inbound Marketing Saves Time
Let’s say I had 20 inquiries about Inbound Storm. How long do you think it would it take for me to answer each of these questions (and the follow-ups) in phone calls ? Thirty minutes each? That’s 600 minutes, or 10 hours. Multiply those hours by what my time is worth, and it really starts to add up.
But that’s how sales works – you have to put in the time and develop the lead, right? No, that’s how sales used to work, until Inbound Marketing came along. Now you can bang out those 20 answers via email in all of 20 minutes, simply by giving them links to your blog posts.
Yeah, but emailing links is too impersonal, you say. It can be but consider the fact that you’re still reading this blog. It’s not personal, one-on-one contact but would you rather I had barfed all this information to you over the phone? My guess is not because you’re as tired of sales pitches as I am. Beginning to see how this works?
How Inbound Marketing Increases Profits
The beauty of a blog is it allows customers to consume information at their own pace, rather than it being forced down their throat. When the customer is ready, they’ll call. That’s why it’s called Inbound Marketing – they come to you! And as an added bonus, they’re much farther down your sales funnel, which means they’re less likely to shop around.
With the right software, you can literally track the number of clicks, leads and sales derived from a single blog post. How neat is that? Make sure to talk to me about HubSpot but don’t worry, I’m not in the software business.
I understand that not every customer will be interested in reading your content. What you’ll find is those customers tend to be the very same ones who are more interested in price rather than value. Do you really need more of those customers, or would you rather spend your time on customers who recognize the value of your product or service? Unless you’re Wal-Mart, quality usually trumps quantity. A more engaged customer leads to a more profitable customer. It’s that simple.
Still not sure Inbound Marketing would work for your industry? I can’t think of a business that wouldn’t benefit from it but you’re welcome to try and prove me wrong. Get in touch.
