The online sector of every industry is growing rapidly today. ecommerce is expanding at a phenomenal rate and this has led businesses to invest in different forms of marketing.
It is clear to many that digital marketing is essential to emerging businesses, as well as established ones. However, not everyone realizes the advantages of inbound marketing.
And those that are aware of inbound marketing, may not understand how important it is to set goals.
What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing could be described as a methodology or a strategy to attract more customers.
The way inbound marketing works is to create content that is beneficial to visitors and future customers. This means providing information, and solutions, to customers’ problems.
There are many ways that you can turn your website into an inbound marketing machine. These include adding a blog with quality content and relevant information.
Other tools that can be used for inbound marketing are email campaigns, online advertising, video content, social media posts, and webinars.
Why is this different from digital marketing?
Digital marketing is an invaluable way of creating brand awareness, and advertising products.
While digital marketing is essential to any ecommerce business, it is different from inbound marketing.
If you were involved in a digital marketing campaign, then you would be looking for ways to push your brand onto the public. Digital marketing helps brands to grow.
Inbound marketing is unique in that it works to draw people towards a brand, rather than pushing that brand outwards at the customer.
A business in this field such as Vectis Marketing will work with a client to build an inbound marketing strategy. This would involve advising on the content needed to draw more visitors and customers to a website.
Why is goal setting important?
Quite simply, if you don’t set goals, you won’t be able to see what you are achieving.
To be able to see if an inbound marketing campaign is being successful requires some goals to be set.
For instance, if you are looking to lower your bounce rate, and retain visitors to your site, then you should set a goal here.
According to Content Square’s Annual Benchmark Report, 45% of all web content goes unseen. Around 47% of visitors leave a site after viewing just one page too.
If you set goals around this area then you can see whether your campaign is working.
What else can goal setting achieve with inbound marketing?
Marketing campaigns cost money. One important area with any marketing campaign is to see the return on investment.
Measuring ROI helps to establish the success of an inbound marketing campaign. So, setting goals in this area is important.
Goal setting can also help to align different apartments. For example, having goals and targets can help marketing and sales work closer together.
This can help you to see how many leads are coming in, and how many are being converted.
Without goals, your campaign may lead to a scatter-gun approach where you have no idea what is being hit or missed.
Why use inbound marketing?
One of the main advantages of using inbound marketing is that it can be very cost-effective.
Marketing campaigns can be costly. Ask Chanel who once spent $33 million on one advert.
Therefore, it is essential to ensure that a campaign is successful and profitable.
These types of marketing campaigns can be modified as they are running. This ability to tweak certain areas means that they can produce a high ROI. This is another reason why goal setting is important.
The advantages of using inbound marketing
There are more reasons to use inbound marketing than just because it is cost-effective.
Inbound marketing helps to build trust between a brand and its customers.
In the past, big expensive adverts have been used to attract new customers. Now though, people are more interested in valuable content. Providing regular information through videos, infographics, and webinars, can build trust and brand loyalty.
This in turn helps to create a long-term strategy. Inbound marketing is no quick-fix. There are countless ways that inbound marketing can be used, and a business should look at them for the long term.
Inbound marketing can help improve conversion rates. This is becoming increasingly important as stats show.
According to Statista, around 80% of shopping carts were abandoned online in March 2021.
Inbound marketing can also lead to a higher Google ranking, and increased traffic.
Setting goals at the start, and during, the campaign, means that all these areas can be monitored. If goals aren’t being met, then a business can look at what the issues are, and concentrate on fixing them.
Summary
Inbound marketing is a unique methodology that works at creating content, and ultimately solutions, for potential customers.
It has long-term benefits and can provide excellent ROI. However, without setting goals, it will be impossible to monitor the campaign’s success as it runs.
Goal setting will also allow real-time tweaks to be made to the campaign to make sure it stays on track.