8 Ways Inbound Marketing Increases Revenue

A decade ago, marketers thought the best way to amass sales leads involved direct mailing campaigns, buying email lists, and paying for banner ads. Modern online marketing has evolved. We now know that it’s not good enough to simply cast a wide net and bring as many people to a website as possible. What good are prospects if they are only lingering on your site for a few seconds before going elsewhere to make a purchase? Targeted traffic is the key to a productive marketing campaign — finding people who are “soft sells”… people who are eager, interested, relatively ready to buy, and looking for reasons to overcome any last-minute reservations they may have. These people are also more likely to buy again when their needs are satisfied — and tell their friends about what a great experience they’ve had with your company. So, how does one accomplish all that? The answer lies with inbound marketing.

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Here are 8 Ways Inbound Marketing Increases Revenue:

1. Market and keyword research determines who your ideal customer is.

Mod Girl Marketing uses a number of tools to come up with a demographic profile for your most passionate buyers. We go beyond mere markers like gender, race, geographic location, and income brackets to look at buyer preferences, interests, goals, keywords they’re searching, webpages they’ve looked at, and items they’ve purchased. Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and social media analytics make accessing this type of information easy but digesting it and putting the data to use is a skill that only comes with experience.

SEO-friendly content supercharges your inbound marketing, generating an endless flow of traffic from search engines like Google in addition to social media sites. The right keywords act as magnets drawing in your exact target market and keeping them engaged, wanting more.

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It is crucial that your inbound marketing campaigns are backed with quality research from reliable sources. Armed with ongoing research and solid goals, your inbound marketing campaigns will be generating revenue on autopilot for years to come.

2. Marketing automation keeps the sales cycle alive.

We can set up a chain of automated — yet personalized — actions to occur once a person gives you his or her email address, buys a product on your site, enters to win a contest, downloads a coupon, visits a particular webpage or takes another designated action. The automated message reaches out to let consumers know that you are paying attention to them, you value their business, and you care about their needs. Companies like Amazon do this quite frequently. They thank customers for a recent order, update them on the status of delivery, let them know about other products that may interest them, and also ask for feedback on their products and sellers. While easy to set up, marketing automation keeps customers happy and sales coming!

Many questions can be answered with data management. However, marketing automation products are plentiful and new software is launched often. Infusionsoft, SharpSpring, Hatchbuck and Marketo are just a few of the many marketing automation platforms out there. This marketing automation review lists over 50 of the top tools and ratings. We have found that Hatchbuck provides everything we need in a CRM and marketing automation platform and at an affordable rate.

It can be incredibly time-consuming to sort through your options, not to mention learn the software that you select. A knowledgeable, experienced inbound marketing consultant from Mod Girl Marketing is a valuable resource in your quest to market more efficiently.

3. Social monitoring links you with people ready to buy.

Our social media monitoring tools help us connect with people asking questions or discussing particular needs related to your goods or services in real-time. We find that shooting out a quick tweet with a solution converts very effectively, as these people are feeling more impulsive about buying if the receive the right offer at the right time.

Inbound Marketing: Why invest?

Image by Moz.com

4. Improved website navigation makes sales easier to facilitate.

Mod Girl Marketing’s team of web designers develop fully responsive websites to ensure that there is a clear pathway to purchase on mobile devices and PCs. If people get tangled up in redundant forms or feel the slightest bit of confusion or frustration while trying to buy, they are likely to do business elsewhere and never return! Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are experimenting with new “click to buy” options that can make direct selling on these platforms even easier. We’ll make sure you’re first-in-line to benefit from these expanded features.

5. Calls to action and landing pages inspire action.

“Ask and you shall receive.” Sometimes you’ve invested in creating amazing content, but readers aren’t aware of your company presence. They may come to your site for information and hit the search engines to shop, bypassing your offerings completely! Each piece of content should have a clear call-to-action, no matter how subtle. Links to specifically-tailored landing pages to purchase will improve your conversion rates considerably. At Mod Girl, we like to use LeadPages which easily integrates with WordPress to create beautiful, high-converting landing pages.

6. A compelling content strategy keeps your brand in the forefront of the mind.

Subscribers may not buy from you every time, but the company that stays fresh and relevant is the company that gets the most business. When people are shopping for Christmas, birthdays, Valentine’s Day, and other important occasions, your business should come to mind. There may not be such an obvious association, like a chocolatier for Valentine’s Day or a local spruce farm for Christmas, but you can work on developing these neural pathways in your customers through a regular stream of timely communications across various platforms.

In addition to professionally-written copy, Mod Girl Marketing also uses effective Pay-Per-Click and Retargeting ad campaigns to get and stay in front of your target audience. As people browse the internet, banners and ads appear on their favorite pages, keeping your brand on their minds.

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7. Surveys and reviews lead to better product development and service.

How is your business doing? Are people happy? Online tools like survey questionnaires tied to incentives can give you the answers you need to improve your product line or services. If you have a great presence on review sites like Yelp or Google+, be sure to let people know about it and cultivate more reviews. If you are struggling for reviews, we can help you craft a clever way of asking for them without appearing desperate with email communications, a landing page, or a call-to-action.

8. Customer Relationship Management makes marketing more efficient.

Are you tracking traffic activity on your site? If not, you SHOULD be! CRM software helps you stay more organized and remember important data. When has a person last purchased from you? Do they need a reminder to stay in contact? What did a person last buy? Are there new products or services that may be of interest? What landing pages are converting the best or the worst? What type of people are buying the most from you, and how can you allocate more resources to wooing more of the same? Are there complementary products your customers buy that make for great co-marketing opportunities? Many questions can be answered with this type of data management — and Mod Girl Marketing has the consulting knowledge and experience to help!