Why Your Sales Team Needs an Inbound Marketing Strategy

In today’s technology-driven, abundant society, customers–not brands–run things. No matter what product or service a person is searching for, there are countless brands competing to earn their business, each trying to entice the buyer with a better deal, higher quality product, or enhanced experience. In response, customers are expecting more and more from brands. They want better quality, a fair price, environmentally friendly options, and personalized customer service, just to name a few demands. And they’re not sitting around waiting for solutions to fall into their laps. With a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips, most customers have already done some online research on the product or service they’re searching for prior to purchasing.

What is your sales team doing to grab their attention and nurture leads?

For salespeople, the saturated consumer market means old-school sales tactics, such as cold calling, networking, print advertising, etc. have become less and less effective. Outbound marketing is simply not enough anymore. Because many–and in some cases, most–of the people you reach with outbound marketing may not even be looking for what you’re selling. Meanwhile, your target audience is online, searching for your product or service right now, nearly ready to make a purchase.

If you want to be found by your target audience, much less stay top of mind with them, an inbound marketing strategy is vital.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a method for creating brand awareness and attracting customers who are interested in the products or services your brand offers. Compared to outbound marketing, which is like finding the right customers by casting a large net, inbound marketing targets people who are already looking for your products or services, and therefore can be more easily converted to paying customers.

The main strategy for inbound marketing is to create content that’s tailored to a target audience and optimize it, so it ranks well in search engine results pages (SERPs). By publishing original, useful content, brands become more discoverable and create opportunities to connect with their potential and existing customers.

Inbound marketing uses a variety of methods to strategically build brand awareness and attract new customers. Examples include:

• Blogs
• Social media
• SEO
• Ebooks
• Webinars
• Podcasts
• Videos
• Infographics
• Case Studies

Benefits of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing allows you to build trust with high-quality leads who demonstrate an active interest in your product or service.

• It’s more cost-efficient than outbound marketing and paid ads. With outbound marketing, such as television or radio advertising, you pay to place your ad in front of everyone–regardless of whether or not they are interested in your product or service. Many of the people you reach aren’t even considering what you’re selling and may even be annoyed by the disruption.
• It attracts only those who have an interest in what you offer. Inbound marketing lets you focus your marketing dollars on finding customers who are specifically looking for your products and services right now.
• Inbound marketing can increase your conversion rates. Inbound marketing drives people searching for a specific product or service directly to the information they are looking for, which increases your conversion rates.
• It provides a long-term ROI. Because SEO is a long-term strategy that typically gets better over time, executing an effective inbound marketing strategy will provide you with a revenue stream for years to come

How To Get Your Sales Team Involved With Inbound Marketing

Aligning your sales and inbound marketing efforts is critical. If your sales team doesn’t know what to do with the leads that come from your inbound strategy, your marketing dollars could simply go to waste.

Here are a few tips:

• Sales and marketing teams should work closely together to create an inbound marketing strategy that’s designed to attract traffic, convert leads, and close customers.
• While planning your inbound marketing strategy, the first step is sitting down with your team to develop a list of specific goals you hope to accomplish. Do you want to build brand awareness, establish your company as an industry thought leader, drive traffic to your website, or something else?
• In order to create truly effective content, you must identify your target audience.
• The leads that come in from inbound marketing will be at various stages of the sales funnel. For example, someone who reads a blog about your product or service is probably near the top of the funnel, while someone who has visited several pages on your website and viewed your pricing page or requested a quote is much closer to closing. Your team will need to outline a strategy to qualify leads throughout the inbound marketing process and decide which type of leads should be nurtured with marketing automation vs. direct sales outreach.

Developing, implementing, and maintaining an inbound marketing strategy can be a major undertaking. If you don’t want to go it alone, we can help! Contact Triton Commerce today to learn how our custom digital marketing solutions can help you reach more customers online and grow your business.