Inbound marketing and how it can boost your sales

With help from PR, you can use inbound marketing to turn strangers into satisfied customers faster

You may remember the days when businesses opened at 9 and closed at 5 (maybe a bit later on the weekends). If a business was closed, no sales were made and that was that. Additionally, all it took to get a customer’s attention was a huge holiday event or cheesy gimmick like Christmas in July.

Thanks to social media, smart devices and constantly connected consumers, the concept of what it takes to attract a customer and close a sale has significantly changed. Audiences now expect 24-hour access and real connections. It can all be very bewildering if you don’t know how to maximize the potential. With help from PR, inbound marketing can help you take advantage for increased profitability.

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is a new way of doing business online. Instead of simply waiting for consumers to notice you, inbound marketing attracts and engages them so that they come looking for you. Once they do, you stand a better chance of making them superfans for your company and brand.

The inbound marketing process involves the four stages of a buyer’s journey: attract, convert, close and delight. It represents a different, better way of thinking about how you can engage your target audience with the right kind of content.

How inbound marketing works

Many companies use tools such as email blasts, social media posts and calls to action in order to attract prospects and convert leads. However, they do this with little or no thought about what consumers actually want and need at any given time. This can be a very ineffective, costly way to conduct business.

Inbound marketing helps you discover, develop and create the content that your target audiences really want to see. Your content must consist of more than simply what you want to say. It should have its foundation in the answers or products your customers and prospects are looking for to solve their problems or satisfy their desires.

Inbound marketing helps with this process by giving you a simpler way to align your efforts with the different levels of the sales cycle funnel. This gives your content a specific purpose and prevents you from blindly throwing words around in the dark, hoping they’ll stick to something and that someone will pay attention.

For example, instead of using your blog as an extended sales pitch, you can write value-added pieces about trends in your industry or useful tips to improve your readers’ lives. This can serve to attract a prospect and make your company a go-to source for information, which translates directly to conversions and sales.

Also, you can use tactics like surveys and social monitoring – staying on top of your image on social media and keeping track of what’s happening there in relation to your industry and current trends – to turn customers into delighted ambassadors for your brand. Using the right message and distribution vehicle, you can make this a seamless process.

What does all this have to do with PR?

The main focus of PR is building relationships, which is what ultimately helps you move a prospect through the sales cycle. A PR firm can create targeted, quality content for you.

Let Axia Public Relations be your strategic partner to transform and enhance your content creation and delivery. We can turn your messages from something your customers resent into relevant information that they come to anticipate. Contact us today or register for our 60-Second Impact to learn more about how we can make inbound marketing work for your company’s continued success.

Lisa Goldsberry is a writer for Axia Public Relations with more than 15 years of public relations experience. She specializes in business, higher education and technology PR. Connect with Axia Public Relations on Twitter @axiapr.