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How is Inbound Marketing Like Dating? A Practical Introduction

How is Inbound Marketing Like Dating? A Practical Introduction

You would never walk up to a girl at a bar, introduce yourself, and then ask her to marry you. She would either simply say no, or more likely back away slowly from the crazy person.

So why do we take this same approach every day with our marketing? You know what I'm talking about - you see this approach in print ads and direct mailers every day. What these ads pretty much say is:

"Hi, We are AB Plumbing. Here are all the reasons we're great. Contact Info."

And then no one calls. Why not?

For pretty much the same reasons the girl said no to your oh-so-slick marriage proposal:

 

  • She just learned you exist
  • She doesn’t know if she likes you
  • She doesn’t know if she can trust you
  • She might want to “try you out” first (I mean dating!)

The Marketing Hourglass - The Buying (Dating) Process:

The problem? No matter what you buy (or who you marry), everyone goes through the same buying process:
DTM-Hourglass-List
Before someone will buy from you (or marry you) they first have to:

 

  • KNOW the product exists (you meet the girl in the bar)
  • LIKE the company or product (you discover you both like iguanas and World of Warcraft)
  • TRUST that the product will do what it promises, or that the company will in business for a while (or that your girlfriend won’t leave you for the next guy who smiles at her in the bar)
  • TRY out the product or service in a low risk way (date) before you consider investing.

Only then will you consider buying the product (or marrying the girl).

The most important point to remember is that every buyer goes through this process in some way for every product or service they buy. The "dating phase" of the process (Like - Trust - Try) may be faster for a lower priced item (like a chocolate bar) - but will be a much longer process for a higher priced item (like a software solution).

DTM-Hourglass-List2

 

But most companies still spend almost all of their time and money getting prospects to know them through expensive advertising, direct mail and cold calling - skip the whole dating phase (Like-Trust-Try), and then spend all their time trying to convert leads through their salespeople - which is a long and difficult process when much of this upfront "dating" work is missing.

Without the upfront work in the dating phase, you will:

  • Get less response and fewer leads from marketing and advertising
  • Spend more time cold calling
  • Spend more time selling - because the sales process starts right at the beginning - your leads aren't qualified or "warmed up"

 Don't forget about repeat and referral customers:

Even better, once a customer has bought they forget about them and go back to working their unqualified leads - leaving out a whole group of people who are most likely to buy again from them or refer them to others if they have a great experience in the Buy stage.

So what is the solution?

Inbound Marketing - The Solution to Converting Leads - and Getting the Girl

Imagine how much easier it would be if your prospects took themselves through your sales process, and then contacted youwhen they are ready to buy?

This is essentially what inbound marketing (and content marketing) is designed to do. Inbound marketing helps prospects find you online, and using content marketing, you "date" your prospects, use educational content to move them through the Know-Like-Trust-Try stages of the Marketing Hourglass - and then contact you when they are ready to buy.

What does this mean?

  • Your prospects can find you when they are looking for your service
  • Your prospects can get the information they’re looking for once they’ve found you
  • Your prospects can educate themselves – and then contact YOU when they’re ready to buy – either now or in the future
  • Your prospects are already interested, more qualified and more likely to buy

 

What are the benefits of Inbound Marketing?

  1. It’s Less Expensive: Purchasing media space for Outbound Marketing spots is expensive. With the Internet and social media, small businesses can create their own content and publish for free or at a much reduced cost.
  2. It’s Educational: Consumers today are more savvy than ever before, and don’t respond the same way to advertising and sales messages. With Inbound Marketing you take an educational approach, and provide consumers with the information they want, when they want it.
  3. It’s Non-Intrusive: There is a backlash against intrusive marketing methods, and as a result it is becoming more difficult to get outbound marketing messages out. With TiVO and PVRs, we fast forward through commercials on TV, we add our phone numbers to “do not call” lists to prevent telemarketers from getting through, we throw out direct mail, and we leave websites with pop-up ads.
  4. It Reduced the Need to Cold Call and Sell: Inbound marketing is about enabling prospects to find you when they are ready to buy, and putting processes in place to take them through the lead qualification and conversion process online – virtually eliminating the need for much cold calling or selling.

Avg-cost-per-lead

 

 **Sidenote: It's important to remember that while this blog post focuses on inbound marketing, there is still a place for outbound and traditional marketing as part of your overall strategy. Also, Content Marketing is not exclusive to online. Offline content including corporate publications, print articles, etc. are also part of the Content Marketing world.

 

The 7 Steps to Inbound Marketing Success

There is a lot of information out there on inbound marketing, so I boiled it down to the 7 essential steps I feel are necessary in order to get started with an inbound marketing system:

  1. Build Your Inbound Marketing Toolkit
  2. Get Found
  3. Create Compelling Content for Every Stage of the Buying Cycle
  4. Amplify Your Content
  5. Convert Visitors to Leads
  6. Convert Leads to Customers
  7. Analyze & Adjust

 

You can take a look at each step in detail in our recent Slideshare presentation:

Inbound Marketing - Part of a Total Online Presence

describe the imageIt's no longer enough to just have a website. You need a total online presence. Today, we've talked about Inbound Marketing and how you can use online marketing to move prospects and leads through your buying process.
Your next step is to build a total online presence for your business. Learn the 7 essential stages to create your total online presence in our free eBook and online seminar:

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