Think about your current sales team. Are there areas that you wish you could improve? Would you like for them to generate more leads, better educate your customers and prospects, more effectively nurture their leads, or maybe all of the above? The truth is that many of today's business owners and marketing directors would probably admit that their sales team could use a recharge or even a complete revamp. Now, imagine implementing a marketing system that checks all of those boxes. That's right: A marketing system designed to give your sales process a serious boost.
Guess what? Through inbound marketing, this is possible! Read on to discover why "hiring" inbound marketing can result in an all-encompassing, dynamic marketing and sales solution for your business.
The purpose of inbound marketing is to create and promote content that generates and nurtures leads, establishes thought leadership, and breeds greater brand awareness. The main distinction between outbound and inbound marketing is the fact that outbound marketing focuses on finding customers, while inbound successfully earns customers’ attention, making a company easier to find. Implementing a successful inbound marketing strategy can eventually evolve into your top salesperson and become an invaluable asset.
Today’s buyers are more and more empowered and educated thanks to the instant ability to garner limitless information from the web. According to Forrester Research on inbound strategy, the following is true about inbound marketing:
“Although it varies greatly with product complexity and market maturity, today’s buyers might be anywhere from two-thirds to 90% of the way through their journey before they will engage with a vendor’s sales rep.”
This fact showcases the immense value of a well-formulated inbound marketing strategy. The following are the four ways that inbound marketing can take the form of a top salesperson in a company.
The first way in which inbound marketing can become just as valuable, if not more so, than your top salesperson, is by focusing on your customers from the inside out. For example, inbound marketing strategies begin with extensive research. This research formulates a target persona.
A target persona represents your ideal customers and/or prospects. Target personas dive deeper than simple psychographics and demographics. They focus on customers’ needs, buying processes, and pain points. Producing content that is strategically written to your business' target persona effectively engages consumers throughout their entire buyer's journey. By utilizing target personas, your inbound marketing strategy can become just as valuable as your top salesperson, as it allows your business to intricately know and understand consumers on a human and holistic level.
Another benefit of inbound marketing is its ability to generate leads. A great salesperson is always generating new leads. In the same way, inbound marketing is a reliable lead-generating system. By implementing specifically targeted content written directly toward your business’ target persona, you will garner an influx of leads who are immensely interested in your business' products or services. Once these leads are generated via inbound marketing, your sales team can take over and nurture conversions, creating new customers. More on how inbound marketing can help in this process is below.
Inbound marketing does more than just generate leads. It also provides your business with a way to nurture those leads. It’s a simple fact that not every lead represents a consumer who's ready to buy. These potential customers might benefit from more education on your product or service, allowing them to feel confident in making an eventual purchase. Inbound content is the ideal solution for nurturing these consumers, meeting them right where they are at the moment.
Top salespeople are great at turning leads into customers. After all, that’s the whole point of leads! Inbound marketing successfully converts leads by using relevant content that speaks directly to your target personas and their individual needs. This is made possible through marketing automation that streamlines and personalizes conversations with prospects. This gives your sales team personalized information about each lead that will enable them to provide a highly relevant, timely, and delightful experience that will make them want to buy from you.
Inbound marketing can become just as valuable to your business as your best salesperson. Consequently, it can greatly benefit you to enlist the help of an inbound marketing professional, such as fuze32, to implement a well-structured inbound marketing strategy into your business's marketing campaign.