Sometimes I come up against a wall of incomprehension when I tell people (clients, competitors, the baker in my street) how I run my business. ‘Our communication agency in Antwerp shares knowledge about our field for free,’ I tell them, whether asked or not. ‘We write a weekly blog about web design, online marketing, branding and storytelling.’
The most extreme reaction came from my mechanic:
You’re crazy, Mark.
He argues that you should make customers and Our team collect our how to phone number through human mannual observance that is why we have complete accurate data. Our ultimate goal is to make your business at the top of improvement and provide you high quality full middle east mobile number list database. And we are constantly updating our database on a weekly basis. Our Database is Fresh 2024 Updated My all database are GDRP base email marketing lists so you can buy here with or without Leads. potential customers pay for knowledge. He argues that giving away knowledge is the downfall of a business.
Fortunately, I know he is wrong. Why am I so sure?
My humble enterprise in the Scheldt city has been around for twenty years now. Of these twenty years, I have not spent a cent on regular marketing for five years (except for a few advertisements in Google Ads).
For five years I have been getting clients by sharing knowledge for free. Inbound marketing is what we call this way of getting clients.
As Head Fanboy of the yet to be established Inbound Marketing Fanclub I would like to tell you how inbound marketing works. And I will also explain why you should apply it too. (Hint: think of your wallet!)
Inbound Marketing: Turn the Tables Around
In regular marketing, you are the begging party. When you place an ad in a newspaper, you are actually saying: ‘Please come and buy something from me.’ You do the same when you have a flyer distributed door-to-door or when you have posters hung up at tram stops.
The fact that you are the begging party makes you the weak party as an entrepreneur . The people you reach with your advertisement, flyer or poster may not be interested in your service or product at all. That makes a lot of your effort and budget evaporate like a saucer of water on a hot summer day.
Inbound marketing, on the other hand, turns the tables.
Let’s say you’re an accountant. You write blog posts, have a weekly podcast, and post a few videos a year on YouTube giving tips on saving money on your taxes.
Will the people who read these blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos then do their own tax returns? No. They’ll send you an email saying, “You seem to know a lot about taxes and saving money. Will you do my taxes?”
The tables have now turned: the customer has become the requesting party. The power to say yes or no now lies with the entrepreneur .
Inbound marketing = more conversion
My experience has taught me that contacts resulting from inbound marketing are much more likely to result in conversion than contacts resulting from an advertisement, billboard, flyer or any other traditional form of marketing.
On top of that, inbound marketing saves you money. Hubspot found that inbound marketing costs 60% less than traditional marketing tactics. The efficiency of inbound marketing combined with the low costs are the two reasons why you should choose this form of marketing. Sorry to answer the statement in the blog title in the second paragraph. But keep reading!
Is my company suitable for inbound marketing?
In twenty years of running Motionmill, I have not come across a company that could not do inbound marketing in some way.
Do you have a fruit and vegetable shop? Write a blog about the tastiest seasonal fruits of the moment. Make a video for YouTube showing how to cut a pineapple. ( I would definitely watch that video!)
Do you do marketing for a travel agency? Create a photo-rich blog with the ten coolest off-the-beaten-path destinations. Create a downloadable booklet called ’50 Tips for a Perfect Tropical Vacation’.
Also to promote a lifestyle
Companies use inbound marketing not only to help the customer with practical matters; it is increasingly a means to put a lifestyle in the spotlight. I will give a few examples of companies that do inbound marketing. You will see that on the one hand they help the customer in a practical way, but on the other hand they promote a lifestyle that the customer associates with.
The first company I mention is a client of mine, the other two are not. I want to show you that I am not the only fanboy of this form of marketing.
Fietsen De Geus gives all kinds of advice on bicycles and everything related to bicycles in their blog . They have articles with titles such as ‘What you absolutely need to know before buying a cargo bike’ and ‘Why you as an e-biker keep Antwerp liveable’. Very relevant information for their target group! By means of this blog shows that they do not only sell a product (the bicycle), but that they understand the lifestyle of their customers and want to actively contribute to it.
Basic-Fit pays attention to everything that has to do with fitness and health in their blog . I see articles with titles such as ‘Can you go to the gym with the flu?’ and ‘What to do about lower back pain?’. They also share knowledge in their mailings, which you receive after you have registered as a customer. For example, my colleague, who is a member of Basic-Fit, recently received an email explaining the importance of good hydration. Through these blogs and newsletters, Basic-Fit also makes it clear that it is not the gyms that are the centre of their existence, but the lifestyle of the customer.
Patagonia makes it very clear in their blog that they are not your average outdoor clothing manufacturer: their site features interviews with climate activists, you can read articles about nature and you can read about sustainable projects. The clothing is discussed here and there, but it is, even now, a lifestyle that puts this sustainable outdoor clothing in the spotlight.
When an organization decides to work with an inbound marketer, the company delivers draft texts to the marketer, after which the content marketer turns them into a piece of content that is appreciated by readers and search engines. At least that is my experience. Let me know if you as a customer or as a marketer use a different form of collaboration.
How do I find topics to write about?
Again, I can only speak from experience, but I think these methods can be used by other companies. As I said, my communications agency not only applies inbound marketing for clients, but also for itself. It is our own inbound marketing that I use as an example. Within my team, topics arise in three ways:
We look in the Google Ads keyword planner and in Google Analytics to see what questions people ask the search engines. For example, if we see that many people ask the question ‘what is TikTok?’, we write an article about TikTok. If we discover that the question ‘how do I get my website higher in Google?’ is often asked, we write about search engine optimization. By answering people’s questions, we profile ourselves as experts in our field. We just have to make sure that the article is picked up well by Google. We therefore have to do SEO . (But that is a topic for a future article.)
What medium do I choose for my inbound marketing?
It depends on your business and on you. Making a video usually takes longer than writing an article. (Although that is not always true. Some entrepreneurs make a super educational video with their smartphone in half an hour, while some written articles take a day.)
The most common media for inbound marketing are:
A blog. This needs no further explanation. You undoubtedly read one regularly.
A video. Post it on your website and on YouTube (or if you don’t want ads in your video on Vimeo ).
A podcast. A podcast is an audio broadcast where the sound file is offered on demand.
For B2B companies, it can also be advisable to write articles on LinkedIn. If we are to believe LinkedIn itself (and let’s do that for convenience), 79% of all B2B marketers believe that LinkedIn is an efficient marketing channel. According to the respondents, no less than 80% of B2B leads come via LinkedIn.
Another way to draw the attention of relevant people to your company is to publish content on trade websites. That is what I am doing right now. And it is also what my digital content marketer Vincent does when he writes an article about online marketing or storytelling for how to check the work of your seo specialist Frankwatching. (Plus, he is satisfying his uncontrollable urge to write at that moment.)
Of course, Frankwatching is not the right trade website for everyone:
A fruit trader benefits from publishing on food and lifestyle sites;
As a dermatologist you write for beauty and health sites;
When you are a mechanic, you share your knowledge on car websites.
Finally
The more content you share, and the better the quality of the dy leads content, the more successful your inbound marketing will be. Choose the right channels to distribute the content and turn the tables once and for all.
Remember the two reasons why you should do inbound marketing:
I notice that more and more companies see the value of giving away knowledge for free. Unfortunately, many of them are afraid of ‘giving away too much’. I can only say to that: there is no such thing as ‘too much’. A lot of content means that you will be consulted for a lot of different things.
The resulting customer contacts more often lead to a conversion.
The days of having to beg customers to make a purchase are gone forever.
