Pulling together all the marketing activities needed to get lots of leads, and actually lead to new customers, can feel overwhelming at times. As a consequence, everyday life for those working in a marketing department can become less efficient and feel more difficult than it needs to be.
If you feel it's time to streamline your marketing and lighten your workload, one option for your company could be to buy in marketing services from outside. Want tips and advice on how to get your boss on board? Then read on!
To streamline your marketing and activities, Inbound Marketing and Marketing Automation are worth keeping an eye on.
In this article, we'll go over what Inbound Marketing and Marketing Automation are. In addition, we'll also give you great tips on how to sell these marketing services to the boss.
The various challenges of the marketing department
Today, a typical marketing department has a number of challenges to address. These can range from dealing with an uncertain market, to keeping up with digital developments, to giving your customers a better experience with more personalised content in your online channels.
Maybe you already have this expertise, but the problem is that you don't have time to do everything that needs to be done. Alternatively, it's something you need more of. Training staff may be one way, but it may take time. Time you need for other things! For this reason, it might be a good idea to look outside and get some help.
In particular, you need to look at Inbound Marketing and Marketing Automation, a marketing strategy that can actually help you overcome these challenges!
What is Inbound Marketing?
In simple terms, Inbound Marketing could be described as a marketing strategy that aims to earn the commitment of customers, rather than force it on them. The key here is to listen to what customers want.
This type of strategy will help you achieve long-term marketing profitability. A bonus is better customer relations and potentially higher sales!
Inbound Marketing is about three steps:
- Attract - via social media and blog posts, for example, with good information that answers the customer's questions.
- Engage - create a relationship with customers by telling them what you have to offer.
- Delight - nurture these relationships so that they become ambassadors for your brand!
In short, the goal of Inbound Marketing is to attract more visitors online and then convert them into real customers. If you succeed with your inbound marketing, you will get loyal customers who will become an invaluable asset to your company!
If you want to learn more about Inbound Marketing you can download our guide to learn more here!
What is Marketing Automation?
First of all, we need to explain the difference between Inbound Marketing and Marketing Automation before we go any further. While Inbound Marketing is the strategy itself, Marketing Automation is the tool (software) to make it successful.
In short, Marketing Automation is a system that merges marketing and sales. These are some examples of what Marketing Automation includes:
- Automatic mailings
- Lead form
- Leadscoring
- Workflows for processing leads
The benefits of using these tools are that customers will have a better experience, you will have more effective marketing and you will get more leads.
Making the case for the benefits of Inbound Marketing
inbound marketing
- Increased traffic to your website. As mentioned earlier, one of the goals of inbound marketing is to increase the traffic of potential customers. And customers will find you on their own!
- You focus on the right type of customers from the start. So you don't have to waste time on those who aren't interested anyway.
- Inbound is cheaper than Outbound. According to HubSpot, each lead in inbound marketing is 62% cheaper than using traditional marketing.
- Takes less time. Time you can spend on other things!
- It is cost-effective. You'll get better results with less work, plain and simple.
marketing automation
- You will save time and resources. Even if it takes some time to set up a good system with Marketing Automation, once it's in place, the work will go much faster!
- Better cooperation between you and the sales department. You will only pass on good leads to the sales department. With lead scoring, you can easily see which visitors are ready to be processed by sales and those who haven't met the requirements yet you can continue to process. Read more about lead scoring in our article on Marketing Automation here
- You get a better overview of the marketing. All information will be in one place.
- This will make it easier to analyse marketing. As a consequence of the better overview, it will be easier to measure and evaluate your marketing efforts.
- You get better relationships with your customers. Marketing Automation improves the quality of communication with your customers.
What Marketing Automation systems are there?
There are many Marketing Automation systems out there. Of course, they have their pros and cons and have different advantages depending on the application. HubSpot tends to do well in general and is considered by many to be the best overall. It's a matter of finding the tool that is appropriate for your needs and what works for your budget. Other examples of Marketing Automation Systems include:
- ActiveCampaign
- Marketo
- GetResponse
- SharpSpring
- Sendinblue
- Pardot
- Omniscient
We recommend checking out FunnelBud. They offer a great all-in-one solution and use SharpSpring as their Marketing Automation system. As it can be technical and time consuming to set up all the automations, they offer a seamless solution. They help with the set up in the form of a monthly subscription with no commitment period. Compared to others, they keep a good price level.
Giving the manager these arguments will hopefully make him understand the benefits of investing in Inbound Marketing and Marketing Automation.
Good luck!
Want to know more about Inbound Marketing and Marketing Automation? Don't hesitate to schedule a meeting with us and we'll tell you more!
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