4 benefits of Inbound Marketing Strategy for Nigerian businesses

Companies that concentrate on inbound marketing strategy benefit superior returns on their marketing investment. That’s exactly what makes inbound so much better than outbound right? Nope. Inbound marketing is so much more than a higher return on investment. It is truly a gift that keeps on giving.

This write-up will cover my experience in inbound marketing. We engage in all aspect of inbound marketing as well as outbound. Nevertheless, the importance of Inbound marketing strategy supersedes the outbound method.

Nigerian business owners are surely doing something wrong when it comes to implementing the right inbound marketing strategy to grow their customer base.

Inbound marketing is the life of every online business and each strategy when properly incorporated with your advertising technique, you get to increase engagement and attract new and potential customers.

A lot has been said about Inbound marketing tactics, what do you know about this marketing strategy?

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a simple strategy of attracting, retaining and making your customers advocate for your business. However, it is important startups and any business understands the benefits and advantage inbound marketing provides to your business in order to understand the marketing value your business.

In this article, I will explore the benefits of inbound marketing strategy on business and their sales team. If a business adopts inbound marketing strategies and techniques, then the sales team is surely one of the primary benefactors.

4 Benefits of inbound marketing strategy on Nigerian businesses

1. Lead Generation

Through the efforts of inbound marketing, your organisation will create (either in-house or outsourced) compelling content optimised with call-to-action buttons that link to landing pages.

These initiatives work to attract prospects and help them easily navigate your website to find the additional resources you offer.

The intent is to provide them with enough value that they will interact and voluntarily give their contact information and thus turn into viable leads.

Throughout this process, the sales team will be fed a list of new leads who are interested in the resources your company has provided.

At this point, it is worth noting that your sales reps have yet to lift a finger during this automated lead-generation process.

There are ways to generate lead using inbound marketing strategy and I’m going to show you snippets of know-how tips to generate leads for your Nigerian businesses using the inbound marketing strategy below.

Ways to generate lead conversation through inbound marketing

Here are my top four Lead generation inbound marketing strategy.

# Content Marketing

According to ContentMarketingInstitute, Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

[bctt tweet=”The truth is content marketing is key and it requires great and compelling contents to drive important leads for your businesses online.” username=”DMSInstitute”]

Here is just one example of content marketing in action:

Looking at the video, you’d realise how important content marketing is and how John Deer magazine sold through content marketing.

When we think of content, the first thing that comes to our mind is blogs. But content can take many forms, including ebooks, guides, case studies, kits, templates and checklists, videos, podcasts, webinars and much more. The important thing is for the content to be valuable and relevant.

The truth is content marketing is key and it requires great and compelling contents to drive important leads for your businesses online.

Specifically, there are three key reasons — and benefits — for enterprises who use content marketing:

• Increased sales
• Cost savings
• Better customers who have more loyalty

Here are some of the ways that content marketing generates leads:

• Attracts the right visitors to your site (in your target market with the potential to become quality leads)
• Keeps visitors engaged enough to be willing to give up information about themselves (and so becoming leads)
• Continues to keep leads engaged through lead nurturing to eventually become paying customers
• Generates social shares and inbound links (to attract even more of the right visitors)
• Creates brand awareness to engender brand preference and influence future purchases

Now that you know that content marketing works and helps to engage visitors, you can read more about content marketing and how to implement it in your marketing strategy.

# Website and SEO

There’s no question your website plays a huge role in generating leads. In the Holger Schulze report, 83% of B2B marketers rated their company website as an effective lead generation tactic, with 23% saying it is “very effective.”

But your website is of no use to you if it can’t be found online. And that’s where search engine optimisation (SEO) comes in.

Let’s see how SEO and website impact on lead generation for businesses.

Here are some of the ways websites & SEO generate leads:

• Rank high for their target market in search engine results
• Grab the attention of prospects when they get to the site
• Use forms that visitors are willing to fill out
• Get valid and sufficient information from visitors to generate quality leads
• Use effective calls to action that convince and convert
• Offer a blog as a source of thought leadership and expertise for target leads

SEO on the other helps your website rank on Google as a result of effective optimisation tactics. There are so many guides to help you get started with SEO and website design – they are The Beginner’s Guide to SEO from Moz, the Guide to SEO from Search Engine Land, How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Beginner’s Guide from DMSI, Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide from Google and the Ultimate WordPress Website development Guide for Beginners from our blog.

# Landing Pages

Wikipedia defines Landing Page as the section of a website accessed by clicking a hyperlink on another web page, typically the website’s home page.

Typically a website Landing is a different page from other pages on your site, this page is normally designed to collect emails, drive sales and serve so many other functions that will drive or engage potential customers.

How do I make my landing pages effective at generating leads?

• Forge an immediate connection.
• Be campaign-specific.
• Follow the KISS principle.
• Follow the 4-step guide to copy.
• Reassure your prospective lead.
• Don’t forget confirmation and Thank You pages.

There are certain qualities of an effective landing page, but first, you need to know how to build a lead generating landing page for your business.

Here are some useful guides to help you design an effective landing page – 9 Tips on How to Craft an Effective Landing Page by WordStream, 16 of the Best Landing Page Design Examples You Need to See in 2017 by Hubspot, How to Make a Landing Page That C.O.N.V.E.R.T.S by Kissmetric, and How To Build a High Converting Landing Page by Conversionxl.

# Social Media Marketing

Social media has turned to the biggest way to market content online. In fact, the majority of our students who registered with our digital marketing training course were a result of effective social media marketing using facebook.

[bctt tweet=”Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media sites.” username=”DMSInstitute”]

One of the primary jobs of social media marketing is to distribute and promote your content to bring targeted traffic to your website.

Here’s how SearchEngineLand defines it: “Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media sites.”

So social media marketing is not so much about promotion but more about amplification, extending your reach and increasing social share. And how you do that is by building a large and engaged network. As Jay points out, once you accomplish that, your own customers will start bringing in the leads.

How do I make my social media marketing effective at generating leads?

• Use psychology to increase social share.
• Use the social channels that are right for your audience.
• Optimise post timing and frequency.
• Don’t just measure engagement.

# Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most consistent methods of marketing contents online. This is an effective inbound marketing strategy because it has been strategically used in nurturing leads who might eventually turn into paying customers.

I’ve used email marketing for promoting our digital marketing training course. And leads who eventually attended our training stated how my emails converted them. Well, away from my email marketing skill, I think you have to persistently push out emails to remind your visitors, customers or potential buyers the importance/relevance of the product or service you are marketing to them.

How do I make my email marketing effective at generating leads?

• Timing is everything.
• Your emails need CTAs too.
• Write subject lines that say “open me.
• Make your email list strictly a DIY project

Here are some useful guide to help you get started with Email marketing – Getting Started with Email Marketing by  CampaignMonitor and A Beginner’s Guide to Successful Email Marketing by kissmetrics.

2. Establish Initial Contact

Picking up right where I left off from the previous paragraph, thanks to automated lead generation, the sales team has a steadily growing pool of leads that have interacted with the company website.

Now, when the sales rep picks up the phone or sends an email, they already have the foundation of the relationship.

Each lead has initiated the connection with your company, eliminating cold calls and other unsolicited sales efforts.

In addition, your sales rep can now tailor his or her phone call/email message to align with to the lead’s journey through your website.

If the lead grabbed a particular eBook, your rep can leverage the eBook download as a context for the initial conversation.

Just like that, your cold call is now a warm call with whom it is much easier to establish credibility and develop a relationship.

3. Enhance Your Position as an Industry Expert

When I mentioned “establish credibility” in the point above, I was touching on the enhanced position achieved by the sales rep through the inbound marketing efforts of the organisation.

It is no surprise to find that people tend to put their shield up in defence when they receive a sales call; it is the sales rep’s responsibility to resolve objections and convey your company’s unique message to interested prospects.

When communicating with a warm lead, the objection resolution success rate is much lower than when cold calling.

[bctt tweet=”When communicating with a warm lead, the objection resolution success rate is much lower than when cold calling.” username=”DMSInstitute”]

If the sales rep connects with a lead over the phone, they can leverage the fact that the lead was interested in their content online.

By simply stating your organisation’s name, the lead has no doubt you are a real company. Moreover, the lead already considers your brand somewhat of an expert on the resources they’ve gathered on your website, and they likely will be much more willing to hear how you can benefit them further.

Your sales rep can further enhance this perception by encouraging leads to digest relevant pieces of content from your website in an attempt to establish your company as the “go-to” source of insight and information.

4. Build Lasting Relationships

Even after a lead has completed their initial research on your website, they may not be quite ready to buy; they will most likely continue their search elsewhere and gather more resources.

If you’ve established your company as an industry thought-leader, they will be more likely to revisit your website for resources and continue to build a relationship with your brand.

Your sales rep will have an easier time building a relationship with a lead who feels like they’ve already built a lasting relationship with your brand.

Through the efforts of inbound marketing and the personal touch of your sales rep, your company should consistently offer insights, suggestions, and more resources to leads in order to increase their trust in the rep and in your brand.

In Conclusion:

There are many more benefits that inbound marketing strategy in an organisation’s sales team, although these four stands out in my mind as the most impactful. By establishing initial contact and encouraging interactive behaviour on your website, inbound marketing takes a substantial amount of work out of the sales process.

I challenge you to avoid sweeping these many advantages of inbound marketing under the rug and remain stagnant with your traditional marketing efforts; embrace inbound marketing methodology and be sure to analyse its impact. You won’t be disappointed with the results.

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