Many entrepreneurs don’t think about leads and instead focus just on sales. They believe the goal of their website is to convert as many visitors as possible and to maximize their sales. The irony is that this actually ends up driving a lot of potential customers away and actually reducing profits significantly. Why is that? Because people don’t like to be sold. Think about your own experience. How do you react to a sales person whose only message is Buy! Buy! Buy! It probably turns you off very quickly.
Why Sales Leave People Cold
When someone visits your website, whether through SEO, a promoted post on social media or any other means, they are essentially going to be cold leads. That means that they hopefully fall into your demographic and they should be interested in your niche but they have at no point demonstrated any particular loyalty to your brand nor have they given you permission to contact them or try to sell to them. When this happens and you try and sell, it’s going to feel pretty much like cold calling. They don’t know who you are, they have no need to trust you and here you are trying to get them to buy something from you. This is essentially the same thing as approaching a stranger in a bar and asking them to come home with you – there’s no pre-amble and it ends up coming across as rather rude. Ultimately, your chances of getting a positive response are almost zero!
Enter Inbound Marketing
Are you wondering what Inbound Marketing is? Marketing and sales strategist, David Meerman Scott, defines inbound marketing this way:
“Inbound Marketing is about getting found online, through search engines and on sites like Facebook and YouTube and Twitter…”
So inbound marketing is about attracting your target audience and getting them to come to you. If you are an introvert like me or just hate “sales,” this is cause for celebration! You can breathe a little easier. 
Inbound marketing tactics include:
- blogs
- podcasts
- video
- eBooks
- e-newsletters
- whitepapers
- SEO
- physical products
- social media marketing
As you can see, these tactics serve to attract customers through the different stages of the sales funnel. The goal is to get your marketing message to your target audience and direct them into your marketing funnel. This incorporates quite a bit of content creation!
Say hello to Inbound Marketing’s BFF, Content Marketing
For the ‘official’ definition, let’s look to the Content Marketing Institute:
“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.
Study the key words in this definition –
- Creating
- Distributing
- Relevant
- Valuable
Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing have the same goal. Converting and engaging your target audience. Of course, your ultimate objective is to drive customer action both before and after the sale. So Inbound Marketing attracts them and Content Marketing grabs them and ‘woos them to stay.
You do this by building a relationship with your audience and sharing useful information that establishes you as a thought leader. Beyond the sale, content marketing nourishes the customer relationship to keep your audience engaged and move them through your sales funnel.
This is why it’s important to think about your lead lifecycle. Instead of trying to sell to cold leads, impress them with your value proposition, the quality of information you’re giving away free and with the way your brand aligns with their values. You’ll find that they quickly become customers!
What are your thoughts on Inbound Marketing? Whar are you challenges with Content Marketing? I’d love to hear about it. Join me on my Facebook page!
