5 Old Outbound Marketing Habits Sabotaging Your Inbound Marketing Campaign
Hands down, our target audience prefers inbound marketing to our more traditional hard sell tactics, calling them during dinner, interrupting their shows and videos, etc., etc., etc.., flashing annoying ads up on their screens. In a win win, inbound marketing strategies like content marketing, custom content creation, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Multi-channel marketing have been shown to have a higher return on investment than traditional methods.
And yet, old habits die hard. Somehow we think that applying traditional marketing tactics and metrics to inbound marketing will make it better. Stop it. Give customers what they want and reap the rewards. Here are 5 old habits that we can't seem to let go as we try to embrace a new era of engaging content.
5. Annoying Visitors with Pop ups
I'm not talking about the unsolicited ones that can be blocked with pop-up blockers. The ones that we pop up while people are trying to read our blogs are just as annoying. The CTA is important. But engage your audience first. Remember marketing 101, Get attention - Gain Interest - Engage - Call to Action. Don't be so afraid of not converting a lead that you annoy the customer into leaving your site. They aren't coming back.
The average conversion takes place after 8-11 touches with your brand, so be strategic. Lure them in. Give them a reason to come back, like, share, follow. Give them what they want first. And the conversion will happen. The ROI will come naturally. Don't try to force it.
4. Valuing Quantity over Quality
Since multiple touch points are necessary for a conversion, some of us just try to produce as much content as possible. But think long term. If they keep clicking on low quality content, those touch points are not building confidence in your brand. And this confidence is what leads to sales conversion -- not the number of touches.
This also applies to trying to make content longer to appease the Google gods who prefer longer content. If the length of your content is not adding value, then you will not meet your objectives by trying to add fluff to your content.
3. Applying Outbound Metrics to Inbound Strategy