Leads, in a digital marketing strategy, are people interested in your product or service, who can potentially turn into customers in the future. Your goal should be to reach out to them to further convert them in a customer. It falls under the line of the first step of the buyer’s journey- the awareness stage.
Inbound vs Outbound
Digital marketing specialists use two different kinds of ways to generate leads: Inbound and outbound marketing.
The main difference between inbound and outbound marketing is that in outbound marketing, a business reaches out to the potential customer in the hopes of turning it into a positive lead. Alternatively, in inbound marketing, a customer finds a business through a blog, social media or some other kind of content. The potential customer gets interested in the businesses’ product or service and reaches out to purchase themselves. Inbound marketing focuses on building last relationships with customers and build brand royalty.
Ideally, your marketing strategy should be a combination of inbound and outbound marketing.
How do you do Inbound marketing?
There are three ways the Inbound marketing methodology can be applied:
1. Attract:
During the attract phase, you focus on drawing in your ideal client by providing them with valuable and engaging content that interests them. For this, you must have an in-depth understanding of your target audience with. You must know their interests, pain points and problems that they’re looking to solve. Only then you can provide them with solutions that they are willing to pay for.
2. Engage
Once you’ve figured out their pain points and problems, you have to convince them that you have the right solution. You can do this by providing valuable tips and advice, some downloadable freebies etc. At this stage, your goal is to convince them that you’re an industry expert with abundant knowledge about what you’re providing.
3. Delight:
After you’ve successfully converted that lead into a customer, your goal is to retain them for the long term. You can do this by making follow-up calls asking for their experience with the product or service or providing customer support. Often people miss this step out and don’t bother contacting a customer after a purchase is done. A customer journey does not end with a sale. You must engage with them after a sale to make sure they’re satisfied with the purchase. This small step can help you go a long way in building customer trust and brand loyalty.
Outbound Marketing:
During outbound marketing, the business engages in a conversation with potential leads to convert them into customers. This is usually done by cold calls, sending messages, email marketing, display advertising etc. Often, the return on investment for Outbound marketing is very low. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad altogether.
A lot of businesses still use email marketing in their marketing strategy. Since people give in their email ID to you willingly, they are somewhat already interested in what you’re providing. If you go about the sales funnel and provide them with valuable content on their inboxes, you can easily convert them into clients.
So, ideally, inbound marketing should make up a large part of your marketing strategy but that doesn’t mean you should completely ignore outbound marketing either. Your strategy should be an ideal combination of the two so you can generate valuable leads in the most efficient way.
If you’re not sure how to go about implementing it into your business, trust a credible online marketing agency that can help you boost your leads. Quantum Gully has a lot of experience crafting digital marketing strategies for businesses. You can reach out to them here.