inboundJenna PerusNovember 07, 2018marketing channels

CHOOSE THE RIGHT MARKETING CHANNELS

inboundJenna PerusNovember 07, 2018marketing channels

INBOUND MARKETING YIELDS RESULTS PT. 3

HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT INBOUND MARKETING CHANNELS

Inbound marketing guides the potential customer throughout their buying journey and helps in the decision-making process. Offering on-point content along the way is a challenging task, as predicting customer behaviour 100 % is nearly impossible. How to create content to serve the customer in the right way, at the right time and in the right place? How to select the right channels to distribute your content in a way that serves your purpose and delivers value to the customer?

Your customers are online, seeking to find solutions to their problems, comparing service providers and absorbing new information to utilise for professional purposes. While the customers are already online, inbound marketing aims to attract the customers to read, listen or watch your content. Inbound marketing is virtually any tactic that's based on earning the customer’s attention. The aim is to engage the attention of potential customers through social media and search engine optimisation. Ultimately, the goal is to direct the customer to your website. While potential customers are on an information hunt online, you can step in to provide them with valuable content.

How to create GREAT content?

As opposed to traditional marketing, which is often interruptive and lacks interaction, inbound marketing is based on attracting the potential customer to engage with your content. Attraction marketing avoids pushing your message and aims to capture the attention of the potential customer. Marketing should genuinely serve and help the customer. It should be an interactive and pleasant experience for the customer. Inbound content focuses on your customers’ needs, solving their problems and providing valuable solutions. The purpose of your content is to nurture your customers from the very beginning - and build lasting relationships. Read more about the differences between inbound and outbound marketing.

Great content solves problems, is interesting and creates value. Besides being interesting, your content should be served at the right time. In order to offer relevant content, you need to identify where the customer is at on their buying journey and deliver content accordingly. But how to create great content? First, it needs to be relevant, precise, timely and useful. Read more about customer-centric content here.

We’ve covered the fact that attention should be paid to the different stages of the purchasing process. The content you provide should serve the customer throughout their information search and buying process. In addition, your customers’ preferences on how to consume the content may vary: some prefer reading while others want to watch videos or listen to podcasts. To become the king of the hill, you need to strive to deliver valuable content in alternative formats every step of the way.

To create value in digital channels takes more than a presence. Maintaining a digital channel requires distributing valuable content on a regular basis. If you don’t have the resources to invest in each and every channel, choose the most essential ones to keep up to date.

How to choose the right channels for inbound marketing?

There are new digital marketing and social media channels popping out each year. Having a presence in each and every channel doesn’t necessarily serve your company’s purposes. The choice of the channels should be based on your strategy, resources and goals. The channels should support your brand message and allow superior customer service. It’s important to consider how the selected channels enable the development of customer loyalty and communication in a way that motivates the customer to proceed in their buying process. If marketing in a digital channel doesn’t support reaching your long-term goals it’s probably not worth the investment.

The B2B marketing channels should be picked based on your potential and existing customers. Before selecting the channels, it beneficial to identify your main customer groups and target audience. In defining the target customer groups, the buyer persona analysis is a helpful tool. Once the target audiences are determined, it’s easier to choose the right channels to serve the existing and potential customers. To put it simply, be where your main customer audiences are looking for information.

For B2B customers, search engines, social media channels and company websites are the most valued channels to consume information. In the process of creating a content strategy, attention should be paid to the fact that today social media is used as a search engine: YouTube is the biggest search engine after Google and e.g. in Twitter, hashtags are used to share and look for information. To sum up, when choosing the right channels for inbound marketing, it’s essential to understand your target audiences and allocate resources to maintaining the most useful marketing channels.

inbound marketing channels checklist:

Invest in the content on your website and search engine optimisation of the content
Base the selection of social media channels and content on social media on customer persona analysis
Publish only content that creates value for your target audience
Allocate resources to maintaining the most useful marketing channels.