“Do you have processes in place to have the customer seek you out? Probably not, but you can simply by making small changes to your current marketing strategies.”
Let’s talk about outbound marketing and inbound marketing. Outbound marketing is where you go seek out the customer. Inbound marketing is where the customer is seeking you out. So, let me ask you, which would you prefer? A scenario where you have to actively pursue customers? Or a scenario where the customer seeks you out, and you don’t have to actively do anything?
I am hoping you choose the second option—because isn’t that really what we all want? Who doesn’t want to just set it and forget it and have prospects come to us? That is the optimal outcome. But you can use outbound marketing methods in an inbound marketing scenario if you do it right.
There are certain processes you need in place to make it work. Do you have processes in place to have the customer seek you out? Probably not, but you can simply by making small changes to your current marketing strategies.
Article and guest blog marketing is one area you can combine the two methods. Social media posting such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, are others as well as video marketing such as YouTube.
Did you notice none of those involve paid advertising? Because paid advertising is outbound only. We are paying to get the eyes (of the prospect) on us. We are seeking them out.
You are probably saying to yourself, “I already do those; this is nothing new.” And I am not implying you are doing it wrong. But are you sure you aren’t leaving out the most important part?
For each one of these strategies, we are doing one thing… putting out content and getting the prospect interested. We’re saying, “Hey, here’s an article/post/video. Let me tell you how smart I am.” So, we put our content out, and they see it and hopefully like what they see and want to learn more from me. But if you JUST put out all these different pieces of content without the most important part, you are wasting your time.
What is this elusive “most important part” I keep going on about? It’s simply, a call to action but not just any call to action. It needs to be done in a very specific way. Let’s say I post something to Facebook such as a quote, a picture, or a short message. At the end of that post, I want to add a quick little reminder like “Hey, don’t forget to check out my .” Or “Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter.” This should not just be on a post or two. It needs to be on each and EVERY post you do!
If you counted every one of your social media posts, how many social media posts do you have? A hundred, 200, 500, a thousand, maybe more? Now, imagine if every single one of those posts actually led to an offer of some sort. Maybe it was a free tool. Maybe it was a report, maybe it was just traffic to a site.
We have to remember that the objective of our social media is to get people OFF of social media and onto our site because at this point, we don’t own those followers. Facebook does, Twitter does… We are just borrowing that audience. We don’t have any control over it whatsoever. But the moment we can get that person off of that social media website and actually onto our own email list, what happens? They’re ours—now we own that information! They’re an asset to us. Now we actually have something tangible that we can actually work with, which is their name and email address, so your objective is always to get those people off of social media.
Think about all the social media posts you have made. If you had a call to action to get them to subscribe to your list, how many leads would you have generated by now? Just using a simple opt-in in rate of 10% and say 20,000 views, we are talking 2,000 leads you have missed out on simply because you didn’t give them the opportunity.
With article marketing and guest blogging, what’s our objective? Whether we’re posting articles to Medium or LinkedIn or any place where we post an article (Even posting an article to our own site could technically be considered if we get the page indexed and people see it on Google.), the objective is still the same as our objective in social media. It is to get that prospect to OUR site.
With an article or blog post, we would want to use what is called a Johnson box at the end. A Johnson box basically is a small box or blurb at the end that talks about the author and how to contact them or learn more about them. It is usually two or three sentences and a link. It is in that Johnson box that you can add your call to action. So now, every article you have out there has a link that brings them back to your site.
With video marketing, YouTube etc., we can do this in two different ways. You can pre-record your Johnson box, or in the case of video, micro-offer, and put it at the end of every video you post. You’ve all seen or heard them “Thanks so much for watching my video, click the link below, blah blah blah.” But instead of asking them to click the like button you are going to ask them to subscribe at your site or take a free offer. Both of which require them to go to your site.
You can also put the offer in the description that is underneath the video. So, after you have put in the description of your video you would add your offer and link. And nothing is stopping you from doing both.
A blog interview is similar to what you do with video marketing. When you’re on a blog interview, they usually will give you a little bit of time at the end. They will say something like “That was some great information, where can our listeners learn more or get more information about you.” Here is where a lot of people make a mistake. They will just give their website address. That’s the most boring scenario that you could do. People might go there, but there’s no intent behind it.
If I was being interviewed and the interviewer ends with… “Hey, Armand where can we find out more about you and what you do?” I’d say something like… “I can do one better than that. I want to give everyone who’s listening right now, a 14-day trial to my Marketing University so they can see what we are doing there. All they have to do is go to marketinguniversity.com, sign up and get free unlimited access for the next 14 days.”
Your offer will be different, of course, but do you see what I mean? By giving something away they have even more of a reason to go to your site and give you their name and email. Think of what you can offer to get the listener to know more about you and what will make them want to work with you.
So, how many inbound marketing pieces do you have right now? Are you being passive with those or are you using outbound marketing techniques with them to drive traffic and get prospects?
There needs to be an objective to your content marketing, and it can’t just be to get yourself out there. That is important, but what then? What good is being known if they aren’t buying? Let’s get those prospects to your website and help them want to work with you!
