Inbound & Digital Marketing Blog

Welcome to another edition of “Inbound Marketing Versus…”

The Inbound Out marketing methodology has been up against some fierce competitors, but it has managed to give each of them a run for their money.

In this installment, Inbound Out marketing faces another time-tested technique:

Cold calling.

Everyone’s heard the mantra, “Always be closing!” It comes from cold calling and the way salespeople go through a list of prospects, calling each person to pitch their product or service.

This technique is still used today, but, unfortunately, scammers and telemarketers have given it a bad rap. However, it can still be used effectively in certain industries and under different circumstances.

Here’s how the two compare:

• With multiple people on your team, both Inbound Out marketing and cold calling allow you to contact many prospects at one time. Both are also more personal marketing methods, but Inbound Out lets your prospects receive your marketing when it suits them best.

• Cold calling has a high rejection rate. Inbound Out gives you many points of entry into a person’s life with lower levels of interruption.

• Cold calling is often used by scammers. This has reduced consumer trust in this form of marketing and increased trust in other forms, like social media, email, and doing their own research through useful content.

Let the battle commence!

Inbound Out Marketing Versus Cold Calling — Reach

With multiple salespeople, you can contact many people at one time through cold calling. It’s a more personal form of marketing than many other methods, as you speak directly with your prospects.

If you’re getting a positive ROI, to expand your business you simply need to expand your sales team and scale up.

However, there is one major constriction:

In order to receive your marketing, your prospects need to pick up the phone at the particular moment you’re trying to contact them.

Yes, they can call you back, but people tend to distrust numbers they don’t recognize.

With Inbound Out marketing, you can also contact many people at one time with numerous people on your team, but you’re not constrained by whether your prospects happen to be available to receive your marketing at that time.

You enter their inbox or social media feed and let prospects receive your marketing when it suits them best.

They get back to you on their own time. They don’t feel pressured to respond.

Ironically, this increases response rates and trust in your marketing.

Inbound Out Marketing Versus Cold Calling — Interruption and Rejection

Every form of marketing interrupts a prospect’s life in some way. Even the least salesy form of content marketing still asks prospects to accept an opportunity cost to read and engage with their content.

However, the level of interruption associated with different marketing methods can have drastic effects on the trust you build, your rejection rates, and your business’s image in prospect’s minds.

Cold calling has a high level of interruption. It involves unsolicited calls to people who may only have a marginal interest in your product or service.

You’re also not providing any upfront value. Cold callers are sprinting to the finish line by pushing hard for the sale.

This leads to high rejection rates. Multiple rejections from any one customer can completely cut off that customer from your business, which can have harmful effects on your word-of-mouth exposure.

It can also affect the salesperson’s mentality. Imagine being rejected multiple times a day on most of the calls you make. It can hurt your confidence and zest for the product or service. This erodes their ability to be effective salespeople.

Inbound Out marketing gives you many points of entry into a person’s life, including their social media accounts and email.

The level of interruption is not nearly as high as cold calling. Rejection rates are much lower, because you start the relationship with a lower level of commitment. Your business also provides value first, through free educational content, rather than immediately asking for the sale.

This establishes trust with prospects, while showcasing your business as an authority in their eyes. The content you produce and promote positions you as a teacher.

People trust teachers. They tend to distrust salespeople.

Inbound Out Marketing Versus Cold Calling — Trust and Outreach

If executed the right way, personal outreach is powerful. It establishes connections on a personal level that most prospects aren’t used to from businesses.

And they appreciated it. That’s what makes it effective.

Unfortunately, cold calling does not handle one-on-one outreach effectively. It’s often used by scammers, who have tarnished it in consumers’ eyes (like the Microsoft support scams).

As consumers have gained more power through information available on the Internet, they’re better at identifying scammers who are cold calling. This means they’re more aware of how many scammers use this technique, and they tend to associate the technique with people attempting to swindle them.

On the other hand, reaching out through social media and email is natural. Inbound Out marketing is powerful because it’s personal outreach that’s executed unobtrusively.

You’re not mass messaging people, but rather entering their lives on a one-on-one basis in ways that let them choose whether or not to listen to you.

That freedom of choice is what prospects want. Inbound Out marketing gives it to them.

Traditional marketing no longer works well because buyers have changed. You must learn to adapt. Download the CEO's 2016 Guide to Marketing now and learn to execute your own 2016 marketing strategy today. 

Takeaways

• Both cold calling and Inbound Out marketing allow you to contact many people at one time. But Inbound Out lets your prospects receive your marketing when it suits them best—on their own terms.

• Cold calling involves a high level of interruption into prospects’ lives, which leads to a high rejection rate. Inbound Out marketing gives you many points of entry into a person’s life. Rejection rates are much lower because your business provides value first.

• Cold calling does not handle one-on-one outreach effectively, as it’s often used by scammers. Inbound Out marketing focuses on social media and email, two channels where people accept marketing more naturally.

Today, I’m going to place Inbound Out marketing against an old-school, time-tested advertising technique:

Radio advertising.

Radio advertising has been around for decades, almost as long as radio itself. The first radio commercial aired almost 100 years ago.

That’s almost 100 years of testing, iterating, and optimizing.

Needless to say, radio advertisers have honed their craft. They use a combination of words and sounds to tickle our aural senses and influence our imaginations.

They can reach hundreds or thousands of people at one time, and have an entire local area buzzing about their business.

Radio advertising is powerful, but Inbound Out marketing is a tough opponent. Here’s how they compare:

• Radio limits your prospects to receiving the ad aurally. With Inbound Out, your marketing can be received through any medium you want.

• Targeting any metric except a local area through radio is a hassle and costly. Inbound Out marketing allows you to target individuals who have the highest likelihood of becoming customers.

• Inbound Out marketing isn’t restricted by other costs, like the timing of your ad. It stays consistent over time, while your results compound in the long-term.

Let’s get started!

Inbound Out Marketing Versus Radio Advertising — Receiving The Ad

The ways prospects can receive your advertising either limits or expands your options. More options means you have more opportunity to figure out what works best for your audience.

With radio advertising, you’re limited to delivering your ad aurally.

Granted, advertisers have become experts at combining words and sounds to elicit the thoughts and emotions they want their prospects to have. Instead of viewing or reading the ad, prospects use their imagination. As we all know, imagination can be very powerful.

Either way, you’re still limited to a combination of words and sounds.

With Inbound Out, your marketing can be received any way you want:

• Aural
• Written
• Video
• Infographic
• Etc.

Inbound Out also supports podcasting, so your prospects can listen any time they want (such as during their commute or while working out). It’s just like radio, but targeted and inbound-friendly.

Blogging and other forms of written content are also a huge part of Inbound Out marketing. This means prospects can always come back, read your content, and get to know your business when it fits their schedule. Your marketing doesn’t come and go in 30-second sprints.

You can also employ videos, infographics, mindmaps, and other visual content to convey marketing messages in ways people are more receptive to.

All of this expands your options and gives you enough room to figure out what works best for your audience, so you can scale up from there.

Inbound Out Marketing Versus Radio Advertising — Targeting

Being able to target your ads to the right audience is crucial for any successful marketing campaign.

Radio advertising is particularly useful for one type of targeting:

Location.

If you’re focused in a local area, radio is the perfect medium to target a large amount of people in one area at the same time. Your message spreads quickly and effectively.

However, other types of targeting (such as demographics and interests) can be more difficult and costly.

For example, if you want to target a certain age range, you need to subscribe to a U.S. provider of ratings data (like Arbitron). You then use this data to try to purchase airtime when this demographic is most likely to be listening.

It’s a shotgun approach, but it can be hit-or-miss depending if the right people are listening at that particular time.

Inbound Out marketing allows you to target individuals who have the highest likelihood of becoming customers. The targeting is planned (through the Precise Prospect Profile) and specific, because you’re targeting individual people.

You know exactly who you’re trying to reach, and you can calculate your success rate in real time. This allows you to test, iterate, and improve your ROI as you conduct subsequent campaigns.

Inbound Out Marketing Versus Radio Advertising — Cost Constrictions

The cost of radio advertising is subject to two main things:

1. How big an area the station serves (local, national, etc)
2. How many people are listening at a particular time

So in order to reach your target demographic at the most ideal time for your business, your ad cost is subject to how many people tend to listen to the radio at a particular time.

“Driving times,” for instance, are for morning and evening commutes, and they’re the most popular/expensive times to book airtime. Other times are less expensive, but you reach less people.

Depending on your budget, this vastly constricts how effective your advertising will be.

With Inbound Out marketing, you aren't constricted by other costs. The cost stays consistent over time, whether you hire an inbound marketing agency or implement it in-house. And your results compound in the long-term, through word-of-mouth and social media.

This makes it easier to fit Inbound Out into your budget, and your ROI increases over time.

Wrap Up

Radio advertising can be an effective technique, especially for certain types of businesses.

It’s one of the best ways to target a local area, and you can use a combination of words and sounds to influence your audience’s imaginations.

However, Inbound Out marketing has some characteristics that can make it a valuable addition to your strategy. These include:

• Being able to deliver your marketing any way you want to (aurally and visually).

• Being able to target specific individuals who have the highest likelihood of becoming customers.

• The cost of Inbound Out marketing stays consistent over time.

Traditional marketing no longer works well because buyers have changed. You must learn to adapt. Download the CEO's 2016 Guide to Marketing now and learn to execute your own 2016 marketing strategy today. 

Takeaways

• Radio advertising can be an effective technique, but Inbound Out gives you more options to deliver your marketing.

• Inbound Out marketing offers diverse targeting options and your costs stay consistent over time.

Part 6 of the “Inbound Out Marketing versus” series features another strong opponent:

Online advertising.

Online advertising involves paying a popular website, like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google, to display ads that promote your business.

You get to piggyback on the popularity of those sites to drive traffic back to yours, generate leads, and convert customers. Paid advertising is a powerful way to grow your business online.

If online advertising is right for your business, Inbound Out marketing can incorporate it. It becomes a tactic within your larger inbound marketing strategy.

However, when deciding between the two, there are some key differences that make Inbound Out marketing more effective for achieving certain goals.

Here’s how Inbound Out marketing compares to online advertising:

• For many companies, there’s a learning curve to online advertising. If you hire an inbound marketing agency, they will already understand and execute online advertising as a tactic in your overall inbound marketing strategy.

• Online advertising allows you to target an audience that’s likely to want your products and services. However, Inbound Out marketing adds extremely targeted outreach. Rather than letting another website choose who to market your business to, you have a master list of specific prospects who have the highest likelihood of wanting to work with you.

• Online advertising isn’t as personal, which means prospects don’t establish as strong of a connection with your business.

Let’s break it down:

Inbound Out Marketing versus Online Advertising—Learning Curve

There are many options to choose from in online advertising. Here are a few of them:

• Facebook ads

• Google Adwords

• LinkedIn ads

• Twitter promotions

• Other pay-per-click (PPC) avenues

Learning online advertising is just like any digital marketing tactic; it takes time and practice to become good at it.

Too many companies pay the "stupidity tax." That's the cost of all the things you don't know that ends up costing you money. No one knows for sure, but 80% or more of all AdWords accounts may suffer from significant stupidity costs.

Not only do you need to know which channel is best for your business, you need to know how to get a positive return on your investment.

You can hire a PPC agency to execute online advertising for you, but that’s all you get out of it. You don’t get any high level strategy.

If you hire an inbound marketing agency, especially one that’s skilled in Inbound Out marketing, they will already know how to get a positive ROI from paid advertising. They will also be able to optimize it based on your overall inbound marketing and growth strategy.

This allows you to make better decisions and get faster online marketing results.

Inbound Out Marketing versus Online Advertising—Targeted Promotion

Paid advertising allows you to target a specific demographic of people.

You can promote your website based on someone’s:

• Age

• Gender

• Location

• Interests

• Job title

• If they’ve visited your website before

• If they’ve visited certain pages on your website

• The keywords they’re searching for

• And a lot more characteristics

This makes online advertising one of the most diverse and powerful marketing tools available.

Inbound Out marketing can be an effective complement to this type of advertising. First, create your Precise Prospect Profile. You'll need to do this anyway to know how to target your ads. Even better, use the profile to build a master list of potential customers.

These individuals have the highest likelihood of wanting and needing your products. Rather than letting another website choose who to market your business to, you have a master list of specific prospects to reach out to.

Inbound Out Marketing versus Online Advertising—Personal Connection

Paid advertising gives you the ability to reach a lot of prospects in a short amount of time. And once the campaigns are set, they continue passively without extra work. This is one of its biggest advantages.

However, it sacrifices the personal nature marketing can have. Your prospects are engaged by a promoted post or an ad, not a real person.

Prospects who are engaged through Inbound Out marketing establish a personal connection with representatives at your company and/or with the agency you hire. This personal connection leads to trust in you and your products, and it helps you stand out over your competitors.

Wrap Up

Paid advertising is an effective digital marketing tactic that every company should consider. You can:

• Hire an inbound marketing agency with experience in online advertising, so you can avoid the learning curve.

• Target your marketing to a specific audience.

• Promote your business to a lot of people at the same time.

• And let your campaigns run passively.

However, it isn’t as targeted as reaching out to prospects directly, and those prospects don’t establish as personal of a connection with your business.

Inbound Out marketing allows you to reach prospect’s with a strong likelihood of wanting to work with you, and they develop a personal connection with people at your company.

This is why the Targeted Outreach part of Inbound Out can complement online advertising, while giving you the guidance of a high level strategy at the same time.

Traditional marketing is changing. Why? Because buyers have changed. Download the CEO's 2016 Guide to Marketing now to learn and execute your own 2016 marketing strategy today. 

Takeaways

• Paid advertising and Inbound Out marketing make a smart pairing.

• Inbound Out is more targeted than online advertising, as you’re reaching out to prospects directly.

• Inbound Out marketing allows you to develop strong personal connections with your prospects.

 

The “Inbound Out Marketing versus…” series has been an eventful one.

So far, we’ve found that Inbound Out marketing can make a valuable addition to trade shows, direct mail advertising, and social media marketing in your overall strategy.

Let’s add another competitor to the mix:

Search Engine Optimization.

I love SEO. I think any smart digital marketing strategy takes it into account. You simply can’t beat search engines’ potential for sending loads of targeted traffic to your site.

And the best part?

Once you’ve got this traffic, it’s completely passive. You can let it be and focus on other parts of your business, or work on increasing it even more.

However, certain characteristics of Inbound Out marketing make it a smarter play than SEO. Here they are:

• Inbound Out marketing can be implemented immediately. While SEO is a long-term tactic with valuable long-term results, Inbound Out marketing can achieve measurable results right away.

• The variables to consider are simple -- response rates, lead generation, sales.

• Almost immediate feedback allows you to continually optimize your strategy and improve your results.

And we’re off!

Inbound Out Marketing vs. Search Engine Optimization — Time to See Results

In order to see results from SEO, a number of things need to happen:

1. You need to optimize your page(s)

2. You need to build/attract links and social signals

3. You need to wait for these links and social signals to be indexed by Google

4. You need to wait for that link juice to pass on to your page(s)

5. And finally, you need to wait for that link juice to be reflected in your rankings. If it’s not enough, you need to attract more (or higher quality) links and social signals.

Only a few of these steps are under your control. Once you have carried out a step, the rest is up to the search engine’s algorithm. It’s a waiting game.

And there isn’t a distinct end to the game until you hit that first page. Until then, you have to continually guess whether or not you need to put more effort into the campaign, or whether you need to wait longer for those signals to sink in.

For this reason, many people dial back their SEO and focus on other tactics to grow their business -- like Inbound Out marketing.

Inbound Out marketing can be implemented immediately. There are preparation phases (Strategy, Precise Prospect Profile, gathering a list of targeted prospects, and creating buyer-focused content), but all of these phases are entirely under your control. You control how long they take.

Then you immediately transition into the Targeted Outreach phase. This is where the magic happens and the results begin. You establish connections with your direct target audience, entice them to become leads, and convert them into sales.

No waiting. Just direct results from your efforts.

Inbound Out Marketing vs. Search Engine Optimization

— The Variables

When conducting an SEO campaign, there are many variables to consider:

1. On-page SEO (keyword placement, content length, title tags, external linking, internal linking, etc.)

2. Off-page SEO (social signals, number of links, PR of those links, DA of those websites, anchor text variation, relevancy, etc.)

3. Search engine algorithm changes

All of these variables affect your results. And since search engines keep their algorithms secret, much of this is guess work (even for SEO “gurus”).

But here’s what we know about Inbound Out marketing:

The variables are concrete.

You know your response rates in real time, you know how many leads you’ve generated from each campaign, and you know the percentage of sales that came from those leads.

This makes budgeting for your campaigns much easier. And because these variables are easy to measure, you can continually optimize and improve your results.

Which leads us to our next battle:

Inbound Out Marketing vs. Search Engine Optimization

— Iterating and Improving

It’s inherently tough to measure what’s working best in SEO until 6 months to a year down the line.

This is because 1) it takes a while for your efforts to be reflected in your rankings and traffic, and 2) you don’t truly know which efforts contributed more or less to those results (since the algorithms are secret). Things that are tough to measure are tough to improve. 

With Inbound Out marketing, since you get almost immediate feedback from your prospects (even if they don’t respond to your marketing, that’s still feedback you can use), you can continually optimize your strategy.

You can consistently analyze what’s working and what isn’t. In terms of business growth, this is the most valuable information to have at your disposal.

Wrap Up

The benefits of SEO are too great to ignore:

• Targeted traffic

• Long term traffic growth

• Passive traffic

But it has certain pitfalls that Inbound Out marketing can make up for.

Inbound Out marketing can be implemented immediately and achieve results much faster. The variables involved are simple and easy to measure, and since you get almost immediate feedback from your marketing, you can optimize your strategy and improve your results in real time.

Traditional marketing is changing. Why? Because buyers have changed. Download the CEO's 2016 Guide to Marketing now to learn and execute your own 2016 marketing strategy today. 

Takeaways

• Inbound Out marketing can make up for a lot of the pitfalls of SEO.

• SEO is a long term strategy, while Inbound Out can be implemented immediately.

• The variables are more measurable, allowing you to get feedback and optimize your strategy more efficiently.

Welcome to the third installment of our “Inbound Out Marketing Versus…” series.

So far, we’ve compared Inbound Out Marketing to two other strategies:

1. Trade shows

2. Direct mail

Both have their merits, but Inbound Out Marketing makes for a formidable opponent.

This time, we’re putting it against a more modern adversary:

Social Media Marketing

I’m a big fan of social media marketing. The prospect pool is too great to ignore, and the paid advertising power of these networks (namely Facebook) is unparalleled.

However, there are some shortfalls to social media marketing that make Inbound Out marketing a smart addition to your strategy.

Here’s how this process compares to social media marketing:

• A more targeted approach. You promote your business directly to your target audience, rather than just on a network.

• You develop one-on-one relationships faster and more efficiently. The relationship begins as soon as someone from your company reaches out.

• Better reach. You can reach prospects who are not on social media or aren’t willing to engage your business there.

• Faster results. Results happen faster from initial contact to sale.

 

Let the battle begin!

Inbound Out Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing — Approach

Promoting your business on social media typically looks like this:

1. Create a piece of content

2. Share it on your social media accounts

3. Automate it to be shared multiple times

4. If it gains traction, do a paid promotion

This is an effective method for driving traffic, but it’s a blanket approach. You send your posts to the social network and attract whoever decides to click and engage (and whoever happens to be online at the time).

Only a certain percentage of the people who you want to see your post actually do see it.

Targeted Outreach is a key part of Inbound Out marketing. You promote your business directly to your target audience. It's prospecting through the web.

This lays the foundation for the rest of the process:

Inbound Out Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing — Building Relationships

Social media helps prospects and fans build connections with businesses that would never have been possible in the past.

Brands can come off as cool, hip, fun, smart, ambitious -- whatever brand managers decide. The level of transparency is higher on social media, allowing for stronger relationships to develop.

Those relationships end up as leads, customers, shares, and word-of-mouth—all valuable assets for any business.

This is one of the greatest benefits of social media marketing, but it also happens to be one of the greatest benefits of Inbound Out marketing.

Targeted outreach to your prospects is a key component of Inbound Out marketing. This outreach builds a one-on-one connection with your audience. You establish micro-rapport with each interaction, build a connection with your business, and prospects start trusting you more and more.

Social media marketing can achieve the same results, but due to its blanket approach, this result isn’t as targeted and it happens more slowly.

With targeted outreach that's part of Inbound Out marketing, that relationship builds immediately.

Inbound Out Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing — Reach

Social media allows you to reach a large amount of people at any moment in time. This is one of the reasons it has become so popular for building and growing businesses.

But here’s the thing:

What if your prospects aren’t that active on social media? Social media marketing becomes less effective.

Inbound Out marketing gives your business the ability to reach prospects no matter where they hang out online. And personalized contact through social media or email is much more likely to get a response.

Inbound Out Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing — Results

What are the results you look for when promoting your business online?

• Engagement with your brand

• Traffic to your website

• Lead generation

• Sales

With social media marketing, the time from initial contact to sale can take a while. Their emotional investment in your business starts off low and gradually builds over time.

Eventually, that emotional investment turns into a commitment (lead generation) and a conversion (sale).

With targeted outreach and Inbound Out marketing, their emotional investment starts off much higher. They’re interacting with a real human being. They’re getting a hands on look at your business right off the bat.

Any questions they have can be answered immediately. Any objections can be handled as soon as possible.

Your prospects go from emotional investment to commitment to conversion much faster with Inbound Out marketing. This gives you a leg up against your competitors who rely heavily on social media for their success.

Wrap Up

Social media marketing is an effective strategy. Prospects are waiting to engage your business—if you know how to do it the right way.

However, social media marketing lacks a few characteristics that Inbound Out marketing can make up for.

With the combination of Inbound Out marketing and social media marketing in your overall mix of tactics, your business becomes a strong force to be reckoned with.

Traditional marketing no longer works well because buyers have changed. You must learn to adapt. Download the CEO's 2016 Guide to Marketing now to learn and execute your own 2016 marketing strategy today. 

Takeaways

• Inbound Out marketing offers a more targeted approach to engaging your prospects

• One-on-one relationships develop faster and more efficiently

• You can reach the prospects who aren’t on social media or don’t want to be engaged there

• Combine social media marketing and Inbound Out marketing for a well-rounded, powerful growth strategy

Last time, I showed you how Inbound Out marketing compares to trade shows.

You learned that Inbound Out marketing offers a better return on your investment, longer term results, and that it’s a consistent strategy that builds your business over time.

Now it’s time to put it against another Goliath:

Direct mail.

My goal with this series isn’t to convince you to drop other methods in favor of Inbound Out marketing. It’s to make a strong case for this marketing methodology as a valuable addition to your overall strategy.

Direct mail is a time-tested technique, but Inbound Out marketing has been moving with the times much more rapidly.

Here’s how Inbound Out compares to direct mail:

• Cheaper one-on-one communication with your target audience — Inbound Out marketing takes direct mail’s #1 benefit and makes it more cost-effective.

• Faster response — This means you can test, iterate, and improve your campaigns much faster.

• Provide value — Direct mail is often associated with messages that are too salesy with too much hype. Email can be, but not as much. Inbound Out marketing makes sure of this.

And we’re off!

Inbound Out Marketing vs. Direct Mail — One-On-One Communication

Direct mail’s top benefit is having one-on-one communication with your target audience.

You identify the people who are most likely to want your products/services, tailor your copy to elicit that desire, and send your message straight to them.

With the rise of the Internet, technology has made it cheaper to do many of the things we could previously only do in the physical world. This includes direct mail.

Still, direct mail has been an effective method for decades. And as more marketers have moved to the web, there are actually fewer direct mail campaigns. If anything, direct mail may now work better than it did in the past.

The full cost of a direct mail campaign depends on a number of factors:

• Number of inserts

• Color application

• Personalization

• Volume

• Presorting

• Size of postage

• Address hygiene

• Mail tracking

• Working with a provider

• Mail format

• Delivery choice

• And more

The cost of sending an email is almost $0.

Now, this does not mean that your ROI will be greater with email marketing, but with a lower upfront cost, it means that it’s more likely you’ll get a greater return on your investment through email.

The key factor in Inbound Out marketing is targeted outreach. Just like direct mail, you identify your target audience, tailor your outreach to elicit desire in your products or services, and send your message straight to their inbox…

... but for much, much less money.

This means you can redirect the costs you would’ve spent on direct mail to other important services, like a CRM to manage and optimize your list. (Or an agency to guarantee ROI on your campaigns.)

Inbound Out Marketing vs. Direct Mail — Response Time

The key with any outreach is getting a response from your target audience.

This response means they’re engaging with your business, and it allows you to analyze those responses and optimize your next campaign.

In direct mail, this typically involves filling out a form, checking a box, enclosing stickers, etc. These are then returned to the business.

The entire process can take a week just to get one response back. And if you want to follow up, that’s another few days for your mail to arrive and another few days for it to get back to you (if they even respond).

Needless to say, this is inefficient if you’re trying to maximize your ROI as fast as possible.

The Targeted Outreach part of Inbound Out marketing can send the same message to the same audience, instantly.

Those prospects can reply instantly, or you can follow up within a matter of hours if you want to.

Within two days, you will immediately know what worked and what didn’t so you can make your next campaign more effective. In the fast-paced world of business, this efficiency is vital.

Inbound Out Marketing vs. Direct Mail — Providing Value

Everyone hates junk mail.

Everyone hates junk email.

Everyone loves free value.

With direct mail, you’re trying to make the best first impression you can and get people to take action as soon as possible.

You put all of your copywriting skills into those letters and hope they achieve the result you’re looking for. Hardly ever do you send them an article or a piece of free value first, because this would lower your ROI.

Because Inbound Out marketing is less expensive, you can take your time and nurture prospects. You send them free value, build a relationship, and give your prospects the time they need to become customers.

By sending them free value first, they build trust in your business. They open your emails more often and engage with people at your company.

This personal interaction is invaluable when it comes to lead generation. Building this connection over time make your prospects more likely to become customers when they’re really ready to buy.

Wrap Up

Direct mail has its place in business. It has been used for so long because it’s effective. If anything, it may now be more effective.

However, Inbound Out marketing can achieve many of the same results that direct mail can. Those results are just less expensive, faster, and build a relationship with your audience that isn’t feasible with direct mail.

If you’re thinking about adding Inbound Out marketing to your growth strategy, talk to a specialist today or learn more about the process here.

Direct mail like all forms of traditional marketing are changing. Why? Because buyers have changed. Download the CEO's 2016 Guide to Marketing now to learn and execute your own 2016 marketing strategy today. 

Takeaways

• Direct mail is a time-tested technique, but Inbound Out marketing is new and offers important advantages.

• It allows for lower cost one-on-one communication with your audience.

• It returns faster results so you can iterate and improve your campaigns.

• Inbound Out marketing builds a connection with prospects that isn’t feasible with direct mail.

Today, I’m going to show you how targeted inbound marketing, the Inbound Out marketing method, compares with traditional marketing:

Trade Shows.

My goal isn’t to convince you to stop doing trade shows. In fact, Inbound Out marketing can help improve your trade show results. So there's a strong case for Inbound Out marketing as a smart addition to your overall strategy.

Delegating more of your budget to this marketing methodology offers many benefits:

• Better return on your investment -- Inbound Out marketing is cheaper per lead than most methods, especially trade shows.

• Longer term results -- Prospects build a deeper connection with your business.

• A consistent strategy -- Inbound Out marketing consistently builds your business over time, whereas trade shows only happen every once in a while.

Let the battle begin:

Inbound Out Marketing vs. Trade Shows — ROI

Trade shows can be expensive endeavors. Here’s a breakdown of the costs involved:

• Space rental
• Design and construction of displays
• Accomodations
• Promotional material
• Telecomunications and networking
• Travel
• Miscellaneous

According to Exhibit Solutions, to get a 20X20 sq. ft. floor space, you can expect to budget around $25,200 for the event.

Trade shows are like sprints in marketing. You pay a lot up front, market your business aggressively, and hope you come out with enough customers/clients to recuperate that cost (and then some).

Inbound Out marketing is more like running long distance. The benefits aren’t immediately felt, but they last longer and the cost-per-lead is much lower. Just like getting into a running habit, those benefits compound upon one another and grow exponentially.

So, how much does Inbound Out marketing cost?

There are two ways to engage in Inbound Out marketing:

1. Do it yourself in-house.

2. Hire an agency that specializes in this process.

If you have the right people and time to manage them, you may be able to get good results using an in-house team. In a previous article, we explored some of the costs of inbound marketing. 

This includes strategy, blogging, SEO, social media marketing, and executing campaigns.

To hire an agency, Inbound Out marketing typically costs between $8,000 and $12,000 a month.

Each market and business is different, so the exact cost depends on a number of factors. Use our Inbound Marketing Investment Calculator to determine your estimated investment per lead.

Inbound Out Marketing vs. Trade Shows — Long Term & Short Term Results

Trade shows provide results in the short term. This isn’t a bad thing by any means. In fact, it’s one of the reasons they’re so popular.

Unfortunately, the downfall of those results in the short term is that they only last for a short while. Quick to come and quick to go.If this was your only strategy, you would need to wait until the next trade show to generate more leads, customers, and clients.

A diversified marketing plan should include short term and long term plays. One of the best long terms plays is Inbound Out marketing.

With Inbound Out marketing, it takes time to analyze your business, develop a strategy, create your Precise Prospect Profile, build a prospect list, and create content.

But once that foundation is there, the Targeted Outreach phase begins. This is active lead generation over the course of months and years.

These leads build micro rapport with your business. They build a relationship with your company and start trusting you.

This builds trust in your products and services, convinces them to buy, and eventually turns them into brand ambassadors who rave to their network about who you are and what you do.

Inbound Out marketing doesn’t yield short-term results, but it’s a long-term play that will yield results far down the line, exponentially growing your business.

Inbound Out Marketing vs Trade Shows — Consistency

Consistency in marketing and business growth is crucial.

As we’ve discussed, trade shows are a sprint. They’re a shotgun approach to generating leads. This makes it tough to measure your results and make the minute adjustments necessary to maximize your ROI.

Inbound Out marketing is constantly engaging your target audience and measuring the results of each campaign. This gives you (or us) the power to do more of what’s working and cut back what isn’t—all in real time.

This maximizes two things:

1. Your results

2. The return on your marketing investment

The consistent and ongoing nature of Inbound Out marketing makes it the ultimate long-term growth strategy.

Inbound Out Marketing vs Trade Shows — Why Not Do Both?

I know this drives CEOs crazy—spending heavily on a trade show and then your sales people "forget" to follow-up. If nothing else, be sure to do a trade show follow-up compaign through email and social media. 

Many of the prospects you met at the show aren't ready to buy. So the sales team will naturally chase hotter leads. However, many trade show leads will become buyers—just on their terms and time schedule. Stay in touch and you'll get the lead when they actually are "hot."

I'll leave you with one last idea. Run a campaign before the show. Use targeted outreach through email and social media to announce your plans for the show and special events. Even people who don't make it to your event or booth will still remember you. And, put all these people in your post-show follow-up campaign too.

Wrap Up

This article isn’t meant to convince you to stop doing trade shows. If done the right way, they are an effective marketing method, especially for certain industries.

However, Inbound Out marketing can be an excellent cost-effective addition to your trade show campaigns and other marketing tactics.

It combines inbound marketing with targeted outreach to give you warmer leads at a lower cost. It yields long term results that continue to improve.

If you’re on the fence, talk to a specialist today and find out if Inbound Out marketing will work for you.

Traditional marketing no longer works well because buyers have changed. You must learn to adapt. Download the CEO's 2016 Guide to Marketing now to learn and execute your own 2016 marketing strategy today.  

Takeaways

• Delegating more of your budget to Inbound Out marketing can help you diversify your strategy.

• Inbound Out marketing is a cost-effective, long-term play that consistently generates leads for your business.

• Learn more about how Inbound Out marketing can benefit you.

Inbound Out marketing is a new digital marketing methodology that combines inbound marketing with targeted outreach.

The goal remains the same—Attract qualified visitors to your site and convert those visitors into leads, customers, and brand ambassadors.

The process is fundamentally different and makes Inbound Out marketing a superior choice for most companies. We've fine tuned the best aspects of marketing and sales into one cohesive system that works across industries.

I don’t want to simply tell you that inbound out marketing can help grow your business. I want to show you. Read on for proof that Inbound Out marketing will get the leads you’re looking for:

 

Inbound Marketing Data and Statistics

Inbound marketing is at the heart of a complete Inbound Out marketing process. Let’s lay this foundation first and break down why it works.

Inbound marketing is the process of attracting visitors, converting them into leads, closing them into sales, and delighting those customers into brand ambassadors. Your business creates educational content and promotes it in the channels where your target audience hangs out. That’s where they see your content, visit your site, develop a connection with your business, and convert into leads.

In this way, you’re not interrupting your prospect’s lives as opposed to traditional marketing/advertising, like commercials and print ads. You’re providing value first and your prospects reciprocate that value by becoming leads.

Here are some inbound marketing statistics and data that reveal the power of this methodology:

• Content marketing generates 3 times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, but costs 62% less. (Demand Metric)
  
  
• Nearly 40% of US companies use blogs for marketing purposes. (eMarketer, August 2010)

• Businesses with 31 to 40 landing pages get 7 times more leads than those with only 1 to 5 landing pages. (HubSpot)

• 61% of global Internet users research products online. (Interconnected World: Shopping and Personal Finance, 2012)

• Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links. (HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report, 2010)

• 48% of marketers build a new landing page for each marketing campaign. (MarketingSherpa)

• 82% of marketers who blog daily acquired a customer using their blog (HubSpot State of Inbound, 2013)

Other methods can provide value first in exchange for leads and customers, such as promotions and deals. But they don’t provide the long term benefits of social media exposure, search engine traffic, customer loyalty, and more.

Inbound marketing can be a vital asset to any company’s marketing plan. But there are a few key flaws in the methodology that can leave your business falling behind.

What is Inbound Out Marketing?

Inbound marketing works great, if prospects are actively looking for the information you’re sharing. Some prospects aren’t actively looking for you. They might not even know that they need your products and services and aren't searching on Google.

In specialized niches, this can be a major hindrance to generating leads. In non-specialized niches, you could be missing out on a lot of potential customers.

Inbound marketing lacks the ability to reach these prospects. Inbound Out marketing fills the gap between your content and the people who aren’t actively searching for you.

These visitors want and need to work with you, but just creating content won’t get your business in front of their eyes. Promoting it in forums won’t do it either. Even getting it ranked in search engines won’t help them find you.

Inbound Out marketing gets your content directly to the prospects who need your products and services the most. It’s content, promotion, and targeted outreach combined together.

Inbound Out Marketing Closes the Gap

Prospects build trust in you, and they gain an intimate connection with your business. They’re interacting directly with a representative who can tend to all of their concerns as soon as they arise. This speeds up the marketing and lead generation process considerably.

Direct outreach creates micro-rapport that leads to greater trust in the quality of your products and services. But it wouldn’t have happened without targeted outreach.

Inbound marketing would never reach these people. Inbound Out marketing moves you way ahead of the competition.

Wrap Up

Inbound marketing is one of the best ways to generate leads and grow your business online, but there is a process that works even better for most businesses. It’s called Inbound Out marketing.

The targeted outreach component sets it apart from inbound marketing. It lets you reach prospects that otherwise would not have been engaged, giving you a leg up on the competition.

At this point, you may be thinking "This sounds great, but can I afford it?" Use the Lead Investment Estimator to get an estimate for your specific business situation.

Takeaways

• The stats show that inbound marketing is an effective marketing strategy, but it is lacking in one key area.

• Inbound Out marketing adds targeted outreach to help you engage prospects who can't be reached through traditional channels online or through search.

• Inbound Out marketing makes up for what inbound marketing lacks, and sets you apart from your competition.

Keyword research is the first step in any SEO campaign. If you get it wrong, you could waste valuable time and resources trying to rank for impossible keywords.

If you get it right, you set yourself up to attract heaps of traffic your competitors don’t even know about.

Here’s why:

If you pick a keyword with a ton of search volume, but it’s very competitive, you’re going to spend a lot of time and resources to rank for it, with little traffic to show for your efforts.

However, if you find a keyword that your competitors haven’t discovered yet, you can optimize a page around it and end up ranking in days/weeks (rather than months).

The success of your SEO campaigns all starts with keyword research. And the holy grail is finding untapped keywords that allow you to rank quickly and easily.

I use a 7-step process to find untapped keywords. That’s what I’m going to walk you through today.

Let’s get to it:

Step 1. Find Your Topic

Let’s assume you want to create a piece of content, optimize it around a keyword, and rank for it in Google. Here are the top two results we need:

1. Social shares

2. Backlinks

Social shares give your content exposure, help with ranking, and provide social proof (which makes link building easier). Backlinks tell Google that other people/sites think your content is valuable, which tells Google that it’s worth ranking. Simple as that.

To get these results, you need to find a topic that is 1) shareable and 2) linkable. Here’s how to do it:

Head over to BuzzSumo and type in a topic related to your niche:

BuzzSumo shows you all of the content related to that keyword that has gotten the most social shares. Look at each piece and see if they’ve received a good amount of shares:

If they have, you have just found a topic that’s prone to attracting social shares. If that topic doesn’t get a lot of shares, simply search for another one until you find a topic that does.

Now you need to make sure this topic is linkable. To do this, head over to Google and do a search for that same topic.

Grab the URLs for each article in the top 10-20 results. Then plug each one into a backlink checker (like Ahrefs or SEO Spyglass). This will tell you how many backlinks each article has:

If the top ranking articles are attracting a lot of links, you’ve just found a linkable topic. Now you know that this topic is proven to get shared on social media, attract backlinks, and rank in search engines.

You’re already miles ahead of your competitors.

Move on to Step 2.

Step 2. Initial Keyword Research

This step is quick and painless. Plug keywords related to your topic into a keyword research tool (like the Google Keyword Planner).

Make sure the top keywords are getting at least 300-400 monthly searches. This range isn’t set in stone, but generally, this means you will get a fair amount of traffic for the work you put in.

Here’s an example:

(Note: If you’re using the Google Keyword Planner, don’t worry about the “Competition” column. This is paid advertising competition. Not how hard/easy it is to rank.)

If your topic is getting a fair amount of monthly searches, move on to the next step.

Step 3. Gather a Master List of Keywords To Fit Your Topic

Remember, you’re looking for untapped keywords that will be easier to rank for than the ones your competitors are targeting. This means you need to find a lot of potential keywords to analyze.

In this step, you’re going to pull together a master list of keywords to potentially optimize your content around.

Here’s how:

First, create a spreadsheet to record keywords and their corresponding monthly searches. Then brainstorm as many possible keyword variations of your topic as you can.

Plug these into a keyword research tool and pull up their monthly search volume. If any have a fair amount of searches, add them to your spreadsheet.

Then, do a Google search for the keyword with the highest search volume, and scroll down to the “Searches related to…” section:

Grab any search terms that might apply to your content, plug them into your keyword tool, and pull up their monthly searches.

Add any that get a good amount of search volume into your spreadsheet. If you’re using the Google Keyword Planner, don’t forget to also scroll down and sift through the keyword ideas that it generates for you:

Then search for another high-volume keyword, scroll down to the “Searches related to section…” and repeat the process. Keep doing this until the only new keywords you’re finding have a very small search volume.

This is your master list.

Arrange them in order of highest monthly searches to least. Your untapped keyword is most likely hiding in the top 20-30. All you have to do is find it.

Step 4. Competitive Analysis #1 - Domain Authority and Page Authority

The next three steps involve running competitive analyses on the top 20-30 keywords in your spreadsheet.

The first metric you’re going to look at is the Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) of the top ranking results for each keyword.

Here’s how:

First, install the MozBar Chrome/Firefox extension. Then do a search for your first keyword.

Click the ‘M’ symbol in your toolbar. This will pull up data for each search result:

Take a look at the PA and DA for each result. The higher the numbers, the harder it will be to rank above those pages (in general). The lower the numbers, the easier it will be.

Record the PA and DA for each result into your spreadsheet.

Step 5. Competitive Analysis #2 - On-Page SEO

On-page SEO tells Google what your content is about. It also tells Google how relevant your page is to the target keyword.

One of Google’s top goals is to provide the most relevant results for any given search term. So here’s where you can make a stand with your content:

If the sites currently ranking for your keyword are not well-optimized for that term, you can optimize your content better than them and immediately get a leg up. Often, this can trump Domain and Page Authority (all else being equal, like backlinks).

Remember, on-page SEO is about relevance. Let’s see if you can make your page more relevant:

Do a search for each term once more, and look at the top 10 results. How many instances of the exact-match keyword do you notice? Look in the title, URL, and description.

If you don’t see many, that’s one opportunity to optimize your content better than them.

Next, scan each article and look at the keyword distribution. Look for exact-match keywords and keyword variations in the intro, body content, and subheadings.

Are they over-optimizing and/or under-optimizing for the keyword? If so, you can optimize your content better than them.

Move on to Step 6.

Step 6. Competitive Analysis #3 - Length and Depth of Content

Next, go to each each article and look at content length. Google wants to rank long content, because in general, it contains more information and is more valuable/relevant to what people are searching for.

You also want to look at how actionable each piece of content is. Are people doing a search, going to this piece of content, and coming out of it with more knowledge? Or is it only surface level information?

Actionable content also tends to get linked to and shared more often, so if you can create content that is longer, more actionable, and provides more value than what’s currently ranking, that’s another opportunity for you to outshine the competition.

Come up with a metric and record how these two levels of competition (on-page SEO and Content Length/Depth) stack up for each keyword. I usually use a scale from 1-5.

Then move on to the final step:

Step 7. Choose the Keyword With the Best Competition-to-Search Volume Ratio

Look over your top 10-20 keywords and the data you’ve complied. Identify the ones with the least competition.

Then look at those keywords and determine which one has the best competition-to-search volume ratio. This will give you the best ROI when trying to rank for this keyword.

That’s your untapped keyword.

Simply create your content, optimize it for that keyword, build backlinks, and you're on your way to a first page ranking and targeted search engine traffic.

To Wrap It Up

I hope this article gave you some insight into keyword research, but also how to strategically navigate your SEO campaigns.

It’s much easier and faster to rank for multiple, lower competition, lower search volume keywords than one high competition keyword (despite how many monthly searches it gets).

Spend some time on the keyword research process, because it makes the rest of your SEO campaign that much easier.

Takeaways

• Keyword research is one of the most important parts of SEO

• The success of your SEO campaigns starts with keyword research

• Follow these 7 steps to find untapped keywords that are much easier (and faster) to rank for

 

To learn more about Inbound Out Marketing Strategy, and to get a complete evaluation of your situation, schedule a Free Lead Boost Review.

Like any skill, inbound marketing takes practice.

Your skills get rusty, your knowledge gets outdated, and you start to fall behind on the times.

But just like taking a few months off a sport, it’s much easier to brush up on your skills than it is to learn them all over again.

That’s why I collected some of the top articles out there on digital marketing. These posts get down to the nitty gritty facets of inbound marketing that tend to get neglected over time.

Here are the facets these articles will help you brush up on:

• The types of content that drive traffic

• Well-oiled sales funnels

• Blog promotion

• Lead generation

• Conversion rate optimization

• And more

Without further ado, let’s take a look at 9 epic articles that will sharpen your inbound marketing skills:

1. 15 Types of Content That Will Drive You More Traffic -- Quick Sprout

Neil Patel has grown Quick Sprout, KISSmetrics, and Crazy Egg into some of the top marketing/business blogs around. He’s done it through consistentlyproducing in-depth and valuable content and with an uncanny ability for growing blogs.

In this article, he identifies 15 types of content that tend to drive traffic more than others. These types naturally get shared more often, rank better in search engines, and spark more conversations about you and your business.

Here are a few of those types:

• Infographics

• Guides

• Book reviews

• How-to's

• Lists

There are 10 more to check out in the full article, and Neil explains exactly how to create each one and what you need to keep in mind.

2. How Content Promotion Works: 11 Strategies to Try -- Buffer

The Buffer blog has done a great job of combining effective ideas with concrete data and results.

They regularly get hundreds (if not thousands) of social shares on their content (spearheaded by Kevan Lee). They know a thing or two about content promotion.

This article breaks down 11 of Buffer’s favorite content promotion strategies. Each one is packed with screenshots and insights to help you put them into action.

The article itself got more than a whopping 4,000 social shares. Check out the full article to snag a few of these shares yourself.

3. Customer Value Optimization: How to Build an Unstoppable Business -- Digital Marketer

Digital Marketer is one of the foremost experts in online business. They not only teach people digital marketing, they practice it with countless other businesses they own and operate themselves (in almost every niche under the sun).

In the process, they’ve developed a world-class sales funnel. They implement this funnel in almost every business they dip their feet into. The principle is called “Customer Value Optimization,” and it’s about understanding the buying cycle and how to get the most value out of each customer.

This is the same system that Starbucks and McDonald's use to dominate their industries, and your can read the full article here to learn how to do it yourself.

4. I Built A 6 Figure Blog In 12 Months - This Is How I Did It… -- Matthew Woodward

Matthew Woodward is a solo blogger who went from a lonely Wordpress site to a Technorati Top 100 Business Blog in one year.

He is one of the most transparent bloggers out there. Matthew puts all of his SEO, affiliate marketing, and content marketing secrets out on the table for others to learn from. He even divulges every detail of his revenue in monthly income reports.

This 14,000-word article chronicles Matthew’s 12-month journey to a 6-figure blog. Arguably, it’s one of the most epic case studies ever.

If you want to build a 6-figure blog, Matthew’s full article is your roadmap.

5. How I Grew My Email List From Zero To 1,634 Subscribers In 5 Months -- Robbie Richards

When it comes to actionable marketing advice, Robbie Richards gets it done. Almost every article is backed by his own experience and results.

From content promotion to link building, he covers the topics that so many businesses need help with -- including list building.

In this case study, Robbie shows you the step-by-step process he took to go from zero to 1,634 subscribers in just 5 months. He did it starting out with no traffic, no followers, and the only money he spent was on a $21 Facebook ad.

Email is still the number one marketing channel in terms of ROI. Read Robbie’s full article to learn how to tap into this resource.

6. The Psychology of Your Customers -- Derek Halpern

Derek Halpern is a legend in the marketing community. He’s largely credited with the “You should spend 20% of your time creating content and 80% of your time promoting it” philosophy.

He has also become a foremost expert in copywriting and selling online courses.

In this article, Derek breaks down a distinct “type” of visitor who comes to your site -- The Sideliner. The sideliner doesn’t buy your products/services right away, but they might buy them in the future.

Most of your visitors will be Sideliners. These are the people you need to convince to take action and become buyers.

Derek then breaks down Sideliners into four types:

1. The Indifferent

2. The Skeptic

3. The Worrier

4. The Procrastinator

Each one offers their own unique set of barriers to making the final purchase. Read the full article to learn how to break down these barriers and convert more of your visitors into raving customers.

7. 32 Clever Lead Generation Ideas For Your Next Marketing Campaign -- Unbounce

This article comes from Unbounce, one of the top pieces of landing page software out there. They not only produce a great product, but their blog is full of conversion-centered advice to help you take full advantage of it.

The author of this article, Josh Haynam, gives you 32 ways to improve your lead generation efforts. Each one is backed by either a case study or example (or both!) to help you see the idea in action.

Every business need to generate leads. Discover 32 ways to do just that by reading the full article right here.

8. 17 Content Marketing Tips for Any Size Budget -- The Content Marketing Institute

The Content Marketing Institute has established themselves as the authority in content marketing. They offer training, consulting, research studies, and, of course, lots of free content on their blog.

One of their most popular posts describes 17 subtle (yet effective) tips for taking full advantage of what content marketing has to offer. From repurposing your content to relating articles to your favorite TV shows, it’s hard to read this article and not have a few more ideas to add to your editorial calendar.

Struggling to keep your content fresh and lively? Check out the full article.

9. How We Made $1 Million for Moz -- Conversion Rate Experts

This is one of my favorite case studies of all time. Conversion Rate Experts live up to their name, as they break down exactly how they improved Moz’s conversion rate and increased annual revenue $1,000,000 in the first 4 months of work.

Wow.

So how did they do it? Conversion Rate Experts take a big picture approach to conversion optimization. It’s not about tweaking a headline here or a trust symbol there.

It’s about digging deep into the business, talking to customers, potential customers, uncovering pain points, and using that knowledge to break down objections on their landing pages.

Want to see how conversion rate optimization is done the right way? Grab a coffee and read the full case study here.

To Wrap It Up

Inbound marketing is a skill. Like any skill it needs to be practiced and brushed up on from time to time.

The information in these articles is not exhaustive. They don’t cover every facet of inbound marketing, but for the facets they do cover, these articles are some of the top resources on their respective topics.

I hope you enjoy reading them as much I did.

To learn more about Inbound Out Marketing Strategy, and to get a complete evaluation of your situation, schedule a Free Lead Boost Review.