In American society, there are
advertisements in your face everywhere you look. There are ads on billboards,
television, radio, social media, automobiles painted as advertisements, pop ups
and ad banners on every website and even people dancing with signs on street
corners. With so many advertising strategies to choose from, it can be hard to
decide which one is right for you and your company. In a society so full of
advertisements, we have to question whether the targeted audience is even
seeing the message in the ad, or if they’ve become so saturated with in-your-face
advertisements that they simply avert their gaze. I have been looking into the
facts about push (or outbound) advertising strategies and the general consensus
is that while useful for major corporations that can spend the money on huge
advertising campaigns, outbound advertising is not well accepted and, quite
frankly, is perceived as annoying and invasive by members of the public. In the government
market, sequestration has significantly curtailed outbound advertising and
large scale trade shows. One advertising/marketing strategy that has been
getting a lot of buzz is inbound marketing, and this can dovetail nicely with a
focused public relations program – still the best bang for the buck in your
marketing communications toolbox.
The pioneers of inbound marketing
at Hubspot.com define it as marketing focused on getting found by customers.
Traditional outbound marketing uses cold-calling, television ads, blast emails,
print ads and trade shows. These strategies still can be used today, of course,
but with the advancements in technology and the prevalence of social media,
people are changing how they absorb their information. Inbound marketing is all
about creating great content that will attract customers in a targeted market
to your company’s services. The idea is to create incredible content, make the
content available to the public in as many relevant places as possible, gather
customers and leads from the distribution of your content and gather analytics
on your content distribution to stay on top of productivity and efficiency. Public
relations/marketing firms are devoting more time and energy to this way of
thinking in the current climate.
Content is the most important
element of inbound marketing. It is
essentially the lure on a fishing line and you need to make it the most
appealing and interesting looking lure in order to attract the best fish in the
market. The content should include pictures, videos or a fun interactive
display that really catches the viewer’s attention. A public relations firm can
be an amazing asset when creating content because that is what they excel at.
Public relations specialists are trained to create content that is so
interesting and insightful it will appeal to and be used by reputable and
relevant publications. As with any aspect of public relations, knowing where to
find the targeted audience is key. Once the content is created, the content is
posted on as many blogs and social media websites as possible. This increases
SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and creates a large funnel or hub for people
searching your industry to find you and get enticed into visiting your website.
Once you have lured the public in
with your immediate content, it is time to convert these people into customers.
The immediate content should contain lots of photos, visually-stimulating media
and short taglines about the product or service in order to catch your
audience’s attention. Now you need to transform the public visitors into
customers with your informative content. This information should show off the
best features of your company. The public visitor needs to believe that you are
the absolute best choice for what they need. The informative content should be
strong at its basic level – this includes who you are, what you do, how you do
it and why they should choose you over anyone else in the industry. We know
that the public does not always have a lengthy attention span, so the content
should be very informative in a concise package.
There are many inbound marketing
strategies available to reach your potential customer through different
communication channels to strengthen the relationship and help transform the
visitor into a customer. It is important to remember the target audience, and
leverage the tools and approaches that are most effective with that audience.
For example, for consumer-facing products and services, a combination of email
and social media marketing can be extremely effective. According to Rob Zazueta, technology Evangelist
at VerticalResponse,
it is critical to combine email marketing and social media. He states that, “companies that combine email
and social media marketing have a 27% higher open rate than those who use email
alone.” The first step is to acquire the customer’s email address in order to
send out updates and promotional incentives. Advise them to follow your social
media outlets but more importantly, encourage them to join an email list with
exclusive incentives that will not be advertised through social media. Getting
their email gives you a direct advertising channel to stimulate return sales.
To develop the process and increase the reach of your company’s inbound
marketing campaign, you should get your customers to share their successful
experience with your company through their own social media outlets. This can
be done by giving incentives or special offers to customers who do share your
company with their network. This tactic can significantly increase your reach
with very minimal cost to your business. The cost of the special offer will
most often be paid for with new business from the customer’s social media
sharing.
If you work with the government
marketplace, particularly if you’re selling complex IT solutions, you would use
a different approach that’s more focused on building long-term relationships
and providing education and information to help the government make informed
decisions around your solution. Always be respectful of the specific parameters
you need to follow when reaching out to government customers. Many government
employees won’t feel comfortable giving out their email, and cannot accept
special incentive offers. Still, there are creative and effective ways to
use inbound marketing with this unique customer, to build awareness,
relationships, and understanding of your solutions and services.
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