Inbound marketing? Outbound marketing? Content marketing? When it comes to digital marketing, there is no shortage of confusing terms. The number of buzzwords and acronyms alone are enough to make any business owner’s head spin.
Are you leveraging your SEO alongside your PPC campaigns in order to maximize your CPC and ROI?
Use this content marketing strategy to increase CTR to your landing pages, lower your CPM, and maximize your ABCXYZ! (Note: ABCXYZ is NOT a real marketing acronym, but if you weren’t quite sure, we don’t blame you.)
Add to that marketing funnels, content creation, web design, ad design, and analytics, and it’s understandable that most practice owners would rather just block it all out and save digital marketing for a rainy day that never comes.
We want to help you wade through the confusion, and explain one of the most useful marketing strategies that you’ve probably already heard of but may not be quite sure what it is: Inbound Marketing.
What is Inbound Marketing?
The main goal of all inbound marketing is to attract strangers to your business and use various strategies to turn those strangers into customers and, eventually, promoters of your business. By creating content designed to address the problems and needs of your ideal patient, you attract qualified prospects and build trust and credibility for your practice.
HubSpot defines inbound marketing as the process of attracting, converting, closing and delighting customers, which is an easy way to think about the sales funnel.
How Can Inbound Marketing Working for Your Practice?
Attract Strangers
Inbound Marketing is exactly what it says it is. It’s marketing designed to bring visitors, who may or may not be actively looking for your business or services, IN to your website. In a digital landscape, this means first using a combination of channels, such as SEO, content marketing, and social media sites, to attract a user’s attention.
AUDIOLOGY PRACTICE EXAMPLE
Your Facebook post link about “Is Your Hearing Loss Impacting Your Relationships?” attracts the attention of a friend whose friend likes your page. They click through to your website blog, and decide that hearing loss might be impacting their relationships and maybe they should look into this problem.
Convert Anonymous Visitors into Leads
Once the attention is attracted, content strategies are used to engage these visitors with your content and convert them into leads. Strategies employed in this stage include, remarketing, lead funnels, and content marketing.
AUDIOLOGY PRACTICE EXAMPLE
On your blog post, you have related links and next steps. They decide to see what you suggest someone does if they think they might have a hearing loss. This leads them to a free online hearing screening that they take and fill out the form that sends them an email of their results, which also emails you their contact information and places that information into your automated email list.
Related: What is Engagement, and Why Does It Matter?
Close Leads, Create Customers
Once we have collected information from the once-anonymous web user, we can use this information to work the lead and convert them into a customer. To make this happen, we can use email marketing, content marketing, lead flows, marketing automation.
AUDIOLOGY PRACTICE EXAMPLE
After receiving the email of their online screening results, this lead is aware they have a hearing loss. They receive an automated email about scheduling a free hearing consultation with your practice. The email also leads them to articles about “What to Expect at Your Appointment” and other resources on hearing loss and hearing aids. These articles and resources build trust with the lead and the offer of a free consultation tempts them for more information. They contact your office and your staff prompts them to make an appointment.
Delight Customers into Promoters
Once the lead has turned into a customer, it’s time to deliver the quality care and technology you promised in the steps above. You want to delight the customer with a great in-office experience and provide solutions to their problems. Once you’ve delighted your patient with excellent customer care, we can work online to turn this great experience into promotion for your business, which in turn, becomes inbound marketing to begin attracting new users to your website.
AUDIOLOGY PRACTICE EXAMPLE
Your patient has left your practice with new hearing aids and a great experience. You input their information into your review builder which then automatically sends them an email reminding the patient to leave an online review of your practice. They leave a glowing, five-star Facebook review that pops up in their acquaintance’s feed and makes them curious about your excellent service and what you do…. And the cycle continues.
