A new report confirms traditional inbound marketing strategies are becoming less effective to today's consumers.
New data reveals how today's inbound marketers can adjust their strategy to take advantage of these new trends.
Let's jump right into my favorite revelation from the report:
Salespeople's Credibility is At an All-Time Low
Respondents of HubSpot's State of Inbound survey were asked, "What sources of information do you rely on when making a purchase decision for business software?"
Here are the results:
You want to sell something?
Make sure your product or service is good enough that people are happy about it and willing to talk about it to their friends and colleagues.
You can measure this by asking the question in a customer feedback survey:
How likely would you be willing to refer a friend?
But you already have a great product or service, and you're looking to learn how to help spread the word even further, right?
According to the report, a large majority of people make purchasing decisions based on the recommendations of friends - people they know and trust personally.
Here's how you can accelerate the spread of word of mouth:
- Post screen shots of reviews from Trust Pilot, Yelp, and other review sites
- Retweet people raving about your product or service on Twitter
- Offer rewards for sharing your product or service on social media
- Hold social media contests that give entries by sharing
More information on the subject:
How Businesses Can Increase Word of Mouth Recommendations [Data]
How Online Word-of-Mouth Marketing is Changing
Additionally, customer references are also a powerful purchase persuader. So why not use your happiest and best customer case studies as blog content?
Interview them, ask the right questions, and promote that content as real examples that your product or service actually does solve your customers' problems and pain points.
More information on the subject:
How to Create a Compelling Business Case Study: The Ultimate Guide & Template
Companies With Greater ROI on Marketing from Previous Year Create Content Internally
While the statement is not a surprise to me, how large the difference is between companies' ROI who create content externally is.
According to the report, 79% of companies who saw an improvement in ROI from the previous year have their content created by internal staff and 35% have content also or exclusively created from internal executives.
This is obvious because no one knows the business better than the people who work in it.
However, it is extremely difficult for a company to create all their own content, especially if they don't have a full-time copy writer.
Companies can higher freelancers to write the content, but the content topics need to be chosen by an expert content marketer.
Content marketers know what kind of content needs to be created to generate additional contacts and sales, but often times can't produce it - they don't know the nitty gritty details that make good content extraordinary, unique, and something worth talking about.
How to get involved in your content creation process:
- Review the contents of your articles from the agency or freelancer before they're published. It's a good idea to add input from a staff member of the business to give more and clearer detail.
- Make it a staff member's priority to spend 5 hours a week writing content for the blog. Use your agency's expertise to guide the content topic selection.
More information on the subject:
7 Ways to Speed Up Your Content Creation
Content Marketing for "Boring" Industries: 10 Tips for Creating Interesting Content
Want the Rest of the Insights?
You can download HubSpot's State of Inbound PDF guide that contains much more massive and valuable insights, for free.
Click the link below:
