The online world is buzzing with the business growth opportunities that can be realised through social media and inbound marketing. Roger Edwards examines the concept.
There are hundreds of so-called ‘experts' who would be delighted to charge a small fortune for their time. Perhaps not a day goes by without you having received a phone call from such an expert. But as soon as they mention the word ‘expert', it is time to end the conversation.
This is because that while most would agree that there is a business growth opportunity, two things are also clear. First, social and inbound marketing are changing so rapidly that it is not possible for someone to have become an expert already. They may have more experience or they may have experimented more than others, but that does not denote expertise.
Second, social and inbound marketing are not the panaceas for your problems, nor will they drive growth on their own. They have to be part of a wider business strategy that includes a proposition, of which marketing forms one of the many parts of the business mix.
The main opportunity open to you is being found by potential customers. To see how this can work we need to compare traditional marketing techniques with those now available to us in the digital age.
Most of what we marketing people have been doing for years is a form of ‘interruption' marketing. We send out stuff we want people to read and then follow our call to action.
Letters, emails, TV adverts, billboard adverts, magazine adverts can be effective, but they can also be annoying. That is why people use the Telephone Preference Service to block sales calls, and why they dive for the mute button when the Go Compare opera singer appears.
Content marketing
However, digital gives us the ability to use inbound marketing techniques (also known as content marketing). This puts the customer in control.
In some industries 90% of all buying decisions start with a Google search. This is the key. People want answers to the questions they have. They want answers in the content they can find on the internet.
Imagine someone in Liverpool wants to buy a really good barbecue chicken. They are not going to type ‘chicken' into Google. They would get billions of results.
Neither would they type ‘barbecue chicken', because it would still create too many results. ‘Best barbecue chicken' is still no good if the best is in New York. ‘Best barbecue chicken in Liverpool' might narrow it down to a few local outlets.
In this new world we need to be there when people come looking - that is the business growth opportunity. And this means that your website becomes your content marketing hub. Most websites are created for information only. They have contact details. They contain a summary of ‘What we do'.
