Captivate your online audience with the right digital marketing strategy.
With growing digital media consumption, massive shifts have occurred in the marketing landscape and businesses have been forced to embrace the change or be left behind. While most companies know they need to be online to reach their consumers, too many have failed to pivot their marketing strategy to match the buying habits of their customers. And even fewer know that moving to digital is far more than just tacking “online” as an addition to their existing activities.
As a digital agency and a small business providing creative brand strategy and lead generation, we were confounded by this problem on two fronts: to be able to target our own potential clients and to offer a comprehensive solution that addressed this digital shift. These changes affected the effectiveness of the campaigns we had been providing, meaning, we were coming up short when it came to end-to-end service and being able to show ROI.
What we needed was a way to target customers in the channels they were using; to draw them into our message rather than going out and shouting for their attention. The solution for us was inbound marketing, after consideration of various options we landed on HubSpot as our platform (and inbound as a philosophy) of choice.
So what’s inbound?
It sounds like a buzzword but what inbound boils down to is marketing and selling in a more helpful, human way. It makes sense in the current environment where consumers are getting wise to traditional selling gimmicks, and where the addition of new channels has given rise to increasing noise.
Consumers are growing increasingly resistant to traditional marketing techniques; Forrester predicts that 74 per cent of the buying cycle will be complete before the customer enters the store or contacts the business. It means that the need for relevant, and educational content that speaks to the right audience is key.
Effectiveness in a digital world
Inbound marketing allows businesses to reach customers where they are already, in a manner that meets their needs and expectations. But with this comes additional complexity as marketers need to prioritise content and track return on investment for additional marketing outputs, making measurement increasingly important.
Since the advent of digital marketing, social media has been one of the biggest pain points for businesses launching marketing campaigns.
Our chief marketing officer saw the value to integrate everything into one platform rather than have staff work across seven different platforms and, so far, the response has been positive with everyone in the team undertaking our free training program. It’s helped everyone in our team understand and put into practice inbound marketing.
The impact of inbound
Our business is a living example of the importance of inbound marketing as an essential tool in the sales kit of any marketer. Since introducing these new tools as part of our marketing agency, our revenue has increased by nearly 40 per cent and in 18 months our agency has grown from five employees to 15.
Our next steps to remain relevant include the creation of broader forms of content including interactive offerings, gamification into our offers and using video for live events to engage with our audience.
It’s a success story that isn’t just applicable to us and our clients – every small business can build a strategy that holistically, strategically and efficiently captures the audiences they’re targeting. But what it requires is the tacit acceptance that not all digital strategies are created equal.
Tony Eades, Director of Brand Strategy, Brand Manager
