An inbound marketing strategy sometimes gets overlooked by smaller businesses that think they need to do more outbound marketing to capture their demographics. Yet, outbound marketing still uses too much of the cheerleader sales approach for promotion purposes. Nowadays, the overly adamant sales approach reminds most people of something resembling spam. Consumers prefer a more natural approach to marketing, including more personalization.
Conversely, inbound marketing can certainly look like spam as well if you use overpowering sales tactics. If you're a small business with considerable competition, you need more than just hype to convince prospective customers you're better than your competitors.
You need to establish more trust in a cynical world where the consumer is more circumspect than ever in what they buy and who they buy from. No doubt you're aware of this and make an effort toward being as ethical as possible in how you produce and market your products.
The consumers you want to target need proof of this, however. Using inbound marketing, you have an amazing creative canvas for providing a profound sense of trust in everything you do.
We are always available to show you the way inbound marketing techniques work best for establishing trust, credibility and thought leadership including best practices for content creation. This works for both B2B and B2C businesses alike.
Creating Trust in Blogs
One tactic used to help consumers trust you is providing proof in how you can solve problems for a business or consumer. Blogs are the oldest and most basic form of inbound marketing, yet it's still the most effective place for providing trustworthy information. This works by focusing on content not found in a simple Google search. It means providing exclusive content where you prove your expertise in your field.
While curating content is fine once in a while, it's important to write blog posts yourself describing tactics one may use to solve a particular problem. You don't necessarily have to show that your product solves this problem other than a quick call to action at the end to check out your website. Using this more subtle approach by posting “how-to's,” you combine useful information with proof you're an expert in your field.
Providing Inside Information in Emails
Email marketing continues to be one of the most effective tactic used to get the word out about your inbound marketing and is used to establish trust and credibility. Here, you can also provide exclusive content that's even more exclusive just for those on your subscriber list or one of your segregated llists. Providing valuable, problem-solving content on your blog is one way to entice people to opt in to your email list from your website. Regardless, you have to deliver on the content you promise.
You can do this with plenty of transparency about what you do and what goes on behind the scenes. In the world of B2B marketing, B2B buyers want as much information as possible about the products you're selling. Consumers do as well, though B2B buyers particularly like things like white papers for a more detailed list of product stats.
Provide as much information about your products as possible, though make it entertaining for consumers. This can also work by creating videos and infographics.
Transparency in Videos
Videos continue to be a great form of inbound marketing because they're easy to share on social media and so many other digital outlets. In a video, you give more visual proof of what you do and how your products work, while establishing trust and credibility by being completely transparent.
Show behind-the-scene footage of how your products get made, who your employees are, and what materials you use. In the latter case, proving you're environmentally astute in product production (if in fact you are) goes a long way to prove to the viewer you're not covering anything up.
Contact us here at The Friedman Group, LLC and we'll help you establish inbound marketing strategies, techniques and content that won't leave doubt to how credible and trustworthy you are.
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