Businesses should attract prospects to find your solutions and nurture them until they become a customer. Inbound marketing, simply put, is a strategy by which marketing attempts to allow the customer to “find” the business, rather than the business find the customer. Inbound marketing for high-tech business can be incredibly effective, and can lead to a higher yield of qualified leads, as long as the correct high tech inbound marketing techniques and strategies are utilized. In fact, inbound marketing creates more qualified leads per month than other marketing initiatives. Why is inbound marketing more effective than traditional outbound marketing techniques?
You likely already have a campaign that aims to engage clients in an attempt to generate leads. Engagement is an important component of the puzzle, but in today’s high-tech world, you have to take it one step further to see the fruits of your labor. Inbound marketing aims to create focused engagement, so you are engaging the most influential audience who will, in turn, become the most desirable leads. When implementing with inbound marketing for high-tech businesses, the goal is to establish a focused engagement with technologists in the target companies. We draw from your content and align it with the most recent trends in the industry, and utilize big data analytics to garner a fully composed picture of who the best leads for your business would be. Then, and only then, do we tailor the content and engagement to meet the needs of the aligned demographic through the creation of an inbound marketing strategy. Instead of casting a wide net out to pull in a ton of small fish, we cast a much smaller net but catch the biggest fish in the pond -- in this case, the most prominent leads for your business.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Founders of Microsoft (above) would have implemented Inbound Marketing if the methodology was known when they founded the company. It is very interesting to think about how businesses grow and how methodologies evolve back in 1981 and now.Inbound marketing focuses much of its efforts on creating optimized landing pages. The simple technique helps to ensure keyword generated leads make it to your business, rather than a competitor's business. Landing pages are a relatively simple concept. Through the use of big data analytics, it is easy to see what keywords people are using when searching for a particular product or service. For example, if your business offers computer cleanup services, clients may search for keywords such as “virus removal” or “computer cleanup”. The client may not come across your homepage based on these keywords, since your page may be optimized for geographic specific keywords. Landing pages serve as bait for those prospects who may not naturally visit your site. The inbound marketing methodology is like a spear that pulls qualified leads towards the company website where they engage with your services and products directly.
Email nurturing is one form of inbound marketing that few people seem to give the credit it deserves. You can happily send mass e-mails out to a broad range of potential leads, but it’s unlikely to get the desired results. Email Nurturing allows for e-mailings to be more focused and much more personal than broad based blast emails because they are sent based on their needs of one specific recipient . By narrowing down what people want to see, and, more specifically, which qualified leads should see it, the number of qualified leads you garner from it becomes much higher, and will lead to a better result overall. Email nurturing utilizes several different types of e-mails to engage and re-engage qualified leads.
They are e-mails that offer the recipient collateral, emails that invite leads to connect with your business (via social media, direct contact, or subscriptions), emails that aim to reengage leads that have fallen out of your sales funnel, and finally, leads that are personal and tailored to the lead you are pursuing.
High-tech lead generation must rely, now, on social media in many ways. One way to do so is through the use of social media events. Social media events can be used to engage your audience, but it also helps you, as a business, to understand the needs of your leads, and which leads are qualified and ready to engage. Social media events might include fireside chats, twitter parties, or sweepstakes contests. First, and foremost, social media events get your name out there, but most importantly, it will help you, as a business, garner the information you need for qualified leads.
All inbound marketing strategies and techniques mean nothing if you cannot grab the information you need from it. Closed loop analytics lends serious insight into the lifecycle of a customer. Through analytical analysis, you can learn about the entire lifecycle of your customers, from the second they engage with you, through the time they become a customer. This analysis can help you better align all of your marketing, and will ensure that your strategies are working as best they can. On the other hand, the closed-loop also allows you to see what isn’t working and what can be discarded in your marketing strategy.
Inbound Marketing for High-Tech Businesses is a boon for any business that markets products to technologists (like Bill Gates and Paul Allen would have done when they started Microsoft if the internet existed at that time) because they perform significant research on the web before contacting any company sales person and by then they have already selected a product. In essence, you have already lost or won the sale by the time the prospect speaks to you. Inbound Marketing turns the tables of technology in your favor.
Bristol Strategy is a full funnel inbound marketing agency and inbound sales agency offering the full complement of services to enable our clients to surpass their business objectives by transforming the way they engage with their buyer on-line. Reach out to us to learn more about how our experience and capabilities can help your business grow.
