For a outdoor industry marketing professional, there is nothing quite like the thrill of bagging new, opt-in leads. Waking up to new lead notifications in the inbox lets us start our day by delivering good news to us. Who doesn't enjoy that feeling?
Unfortunately, the conventional outbound marketing tactics are really not too much of help for accomplishing that objective and often drain valuable resources as an opportunity cost.
Digital marketing campaigns that use the fundamentals of digital marketing for the outdoor industry, on the other hand, have a natural immunity to the shortcoming of its outbound counterparts. The results of an effective campaign can be additional leads for the outbound sales department, making friends instead of enemies via the law of plenty.
Inbound marketing is a method of marketing effectively online, luring a prospect into a particular campaign and then nurturing him with high-quality content. Simply put, inbound marketing is attracting relevant web traffic, giving them something they're interested in, and tracking their activity. As they engage they're sent additional offers and conversion opportunity, walking them through a sales cycle until ready to buy.
But to master the art of inbound marketing is certainly no walk in the park - and requires some serious effort in order to succeed. The following are 5 key strategies that may lead you to a successful inbound campaign and create killer digital sales strategies for the outdoor industry.
1) Create really good content, put it on your website
“Content is king,” Bill Gates came up with this statement more than a decade and a half back while trying to highlight the significance of high-quality content for websites that want to benefit from a consistent traffic. The prevalence of that statement is valid for online marketers even today.
The quality of the content of your campaigns is a quintessential factor that may eventually mark the difference between success and failure. Regardless of whether it is the content on your website, social media, blogging or email campaign, make sure to come up with the highest quality content.
2) Distribute content through blog & social media
Social media is an ever expanding platform that helps online marketers to plan and execute a flawless content distribution policy. No matter whether you update your website or blog with some new content, or it is a new contest that you want to exploit in order to promote a new product or service, social media provides you the perfect platform to share the word among all your followers on social media sites and beyond.
In order to maximize the benefits of this rich offering, consult a reputed digital marketing agency. Post first to your blog, then distribute via your social media channels. Just make sure you don't overdo it, no one wants to see 3 Facebook posts per day from your company!
3) Compelling offers make visitors give up their interests
Nothing really can attract more customers (or prospects) than a compelling offer - this is a rule of thumb for all marketing professional no matter what product or service they are trying to promote. To come up with compelling and mutually beneficial offers (to you and your target customer base), first conduct a thorough research of the market you are dealing in - only that can help you comprehend what type of offer can really attract your customer.
Give them something they want, something of value, something to educate and inform them rather than sell them. If they trust you as an expert they'll likely buy when they're ready, not before. Are you scared to give up your secrets and don't want to be a free consultant? Drop it, share your knowledge, reap the rewards.
4) Email nurturing is key to identifying real leads
Maintaining and growing healthy email lists is as difficult of a job as building it in the first place. To nurture the qualified or more serious entries in email list, first clean up your email list and get rid of all invalid, obsolete and disinterested entries. Then target the remaining with compelling and personalized email campaigns and make an effort to keep the messages simple and to the point.
Build different campaigns within your inbound marketing software package to target different groups at different points in the funnel. It's great to be able to send different messages to different groups of prospects, this will let you send them all more relevant messages without sending them something they've already seen or previously proved they weren't interested in. Your conversions will go up and your unsubscribes will go down.
5) Conversion paths help people commit at their own pace
Always try and converge your focus on analyzing the goal funnels, CTA (call to action), as well as user path optimization and then use that information to streamline and enhance the conversion process on the basis of your business objectives. Put your conversion paths on relevant pages where visitors are expecting to find something they're looking for.
Don't push people away by slamming them with offers to buy when they're not ready, respect where they're at in the sales cycle and give them what they want. They'll convert one step at a time and be comfortable in the process.
