Inbound Marketing Insights

Entrepreneurs often want to try to get their marketing content in front of as many people as possible, in hopes that someone might be interested in their content or product. Unfortunately, this often leads to spending a substantial amount of your effort and marketing budget without a strong return on investment.

More and more businesses are realizing that the key isn’t to bring as many potential customers as possible but to find and acquire a smaller group of right potential customers instead. Here are 5 ways that you can work toward narrowing your lead generation strategy and ensure that your time and effort are put exactly where they are needed.

1. Research Current Customer Demographics
The best way to find out who a good customer will be is to look at your current customers. Who are they? Why do they buy your product or service? How did they hear about you? What do all of them have in common? Once you can answer these questions, you have a good starting point to figure out who else might be interested in buying your product or service. Research your existing customers, or put together a survey for them to complete with a monetary offer, gift card, etc. You can then use that information to put together very targeted marketing campaigns to others like them.

2. Identify the Target Market & Content Assets
Once you have figured out who your customers are, you need to find out where they can be reached. Are they Facebook users or Instagram users? Do they read blog posts, or would they prefer to watch a video? Figuring out how to get in touch with those people most likely to buy your products is the key to a good lead generation strategy. You should focus your efforts on social media platforms that your customers frequent the most and do some demographic analysis to find out what media types work best. Should you design an infographic? Make a video? How you interact with potential customers is almost as important as finding them.

3. Find Influencers
Who does your target audience follow on social media? Are there any well-known or prominent members of the community in your niche that you can connect and engage with? Influencer marketing can be a fantastic way to get your product in front of people who are willing to buy it, and they’re more likely to do so if they are introduced to your product by someone whose opinion is valued. Finding the right influencer and having them post a rave review along with links to your page and product is a great way to increase your sales.

4. Invest in Inbound Marketing
While you do want to invest in getting your marketing content in front of more potential customers, the biggest source of people who might be interested in buying your product  or service are the people who have already found you. If they’ve clicked on your links, they are already interested in, or at least curious in, your product or service. Take the opportunity to market to those people. You might consider hiring an inbound marketing expert to put together lead generation strategy for your product or service.

5. Engage Your Current Customers as Ambassadors
One of the most overlooked tools for increasing leads are your current customers. Think about it...they already love your product, they likely know other people that might be interested in your product, and they have access to those people. Reach out to them on social media with easily sharable posts, or devise a referral program where they can receive a discount coupon or a free product sample for every referral that results in a sale. By utilizing your current customers as brand ambassadors, you can save money on your marketing budget and it helps them to feel like they are valued by and engaged with your brand.

Finding a way to target the people most likely to buy your product and marketing directly to them can be a much better investment than trying to get your marketing content on as many screens as possible. If people don’t have a need for your product or service, they’re not going to click anyway. However, if you can get your content in front of people who are already more likely to buy, you’ll get a much better return for your investment.

If you're interested in implementing a lead generation strategy, or looking to improve your current lead generation strategy, we invite you to schedule an inbound marketing consultation with our team. You can also check out our marketing explainer videos if you have any questions specifically on inbound marketing. 

Guest Blog Contributor: Michelle Arios is a team leader and a content creator, currently supporting online knowledge libraries like BizDb and Aubiz. Michelle is deeply interested in all aspects that help businesses thrive and grow, and might often be found online, sharing her tips with other experts. Feel free to reach out to her at @MichelleArios.