Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing.   Let your leads come to you.  

There’s been a radical shift in the way people consume information, research products and services, make purchasing decisions, and share their views and experiences. Between Google searches and social media, the customer now has more control over the sales process than ever before.

Trekk’s inbound marketing services use a proven process to attract visitors to your site, turn visitors into leads, and convert leads to customers.

Want to know exactly who is visiting your site and where those visitors are in the sales funnel? As a certified HubSpot partner, we can give you access to software tools that will not only transform the way you attract and engage customers, but will also align your marketing and sales teams for greater revenue growth.

Trekk’s inbound marketing strategists work with you to:

  • Define your buyer personas

  • Identify their needs at all stage of the buyer’s journey

  • Develop content and offers that capture interest and drive action

  • Automate email marketing with campaigns that send at just the right time

  • Monitor and report on website, blog, and campaign performance

  • Track, qualify, and nurture leads

  • Automate workflows for sales follow-up

What is inbound marketing?

Cold calling and content pushing are over. Now, it’s much more common for consumers to reach out to businesses directly and to proactively seek out products and services that will solve their problems. The Internet provides instant access to details, pricing, and reviews of just about every product and service, and social media encourages sharing and comparing. Our mobile devices give us access to information, wherever and whenever.

Inbound marketing embraces this shift in communication by empowering the consumer. It’s customer-centric, pulling the audience in with valuable content (instead of pushing ads) and building relationships through lead nurturing. It answers the questions potential buyers are actually asking, and it provides personalized content throughout the buyer’s journey to meet the needs of the individual.

Communications tailored to the buyer’s journey.

When preparing to make a purchase, consumers begin what we call the buyer’s journey. B2B and B2C buyers’ journeys may look a little different, but at a high level, the buyer’s journey always consists of four stages: awareness, consideration, conversion, and retention. Know where each potential customer is on their journey so that you can deliver personalized, effective content that converts your leads to customers and, eventually, brand ambassadors.

  • Awareness. 81% of shoppers research online before purchasing. At this point in the buyer’s journey, they know they have a need or a problem, and they are actively seeking out and becoming aware of potential solutions. Produce relevant content that is easily accessible when customers are looking for it to attract these active searchers.
  • Consideration. Here, the consumer is actually considering your product or company (and probably a few others) and trying to determine the best fit or solution for their problem. This is when a visitor to your site becomes a lead. Content at this stage should clearly define your value proposition and set you apart from the competition.
  • Conversion. The consumer is ready to make a decision. Close leads with content that provides a compelling call-to-action — think of it as a final nudge.
  • Retention. This final stage is all about brand loyalty and is arguably the most important. While, of course, you’ve got to focus on attracting and closing leads, it’s crucial to continue to delight your customers and to provide a remarkable customer experience. Create content that shows you care, that’s helpful, and that will make them want to be a customer for life — content designed to engage them and help them be successful. Delight them and they’re more likely to buy again and refer you to their friends.

trekk buyers journey

Nurturing leads from contact to close.

So how do brands help to move potential customers along the buyer’s journey and toward a decision? Lead nurturing.

What is it?

Lead nurturing is the process of delivering relevant information and content to a lead during each stage of the buyer’s journey. It’s the practice of using content and timely communication to positively shape the experience of your potential customers and position your company above the competition.

Why do it?

Lead nurturing is about relationship building. When you reach out during the consideration stage with information that’s actually helpful, it takes some of the guesswork out of the buyer’s journey. It also reminds leads that you’re there in a way that’s not pushy but that instead garners goodwill. Plus, lead nurturing saves time — rather than your team calling contacts who aren’t yet ready to talk, they’ll be investing their time in qualified leads.

The Process

Lead nurturing is all about empowering your leads by giving them resources with information about what you can offer to help them make well-informed decisions about their purchases. Through marketing automation, we can personalize the content delivery to ensure each of your contacts has a tailored, relevant experience at every step of the buyer’s journey.

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Photo by Hello I'm Nik

 

Creating successful lead nurturing campaigns.

Nurturing benefits both you and your leads. Effective lead nurturing programs follow this order of operations.

1. Document your buyer personas.

Bring your target audience to life using characters called buyer personas, whose semi-fictional experiences and stories can help you understand the motivations of your ideal customer. We help our clients create accurate buyer personas by surveying their current customers and combining the insights we gain with market research. We then identify trends and group the different types of customers to craft the personas. We use demographics, goals, challenges, and real quotes to create a narrative for each persona. These stories help our clients understand and connect with their ideal customers.

2. Generate relevant content.

Once you understand your buyer personas, you can leverage your knowledge to speak to your audience more personally and publish content that will help them at each stage of the buyer’s journey.

3. Design your automated workflows.

If you’re using marketing automation to nurture your leads, you’ll need to decide which consumer actions will trigger the next task or piece of content. Ask yourself these questions to determine what your lead nurturing workflows will look like.

4. Test, analyze, and adjust accordingly.

Measure the performance of your emails, landing pages, and downloadable content offers. Continue iterating on content that isn’t performing well, and take your cues from content that is.

Sales and marketing: a team effort.

Lead nurturing unites marketing and sales in a powerful and effective way. The inbound approach requires common definitions of success across departments, which is why our discovery process for inbound marketing programs includes defining what constitutes a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and what constitutes a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). Once marketing and sales have aligned on definitions and common goals, we set up automatic lead scoring based on consumer behaviors. Lead scoring assigns numerical values to contacts’ actions (downloading an offer, opening an email, registering for a webinar, etc.) and ranks contacts in order to qualify them for further engagement by marketing or communication from sales.  

Keeping things simple with marketing automation.

Whether you’re a small or large company, no matter how many leads you have, marketing automation can help streamline your lead nurturing programs. This technology takes the guesswork — and busywork — out of communicating with leads until they’re ready to convert.

 

Attract customers and automate your marketing with an inbound strategy. Work with us.