We will be dealing with mapping the sales process to acquire a customer, your go to market strategy. What does a go to market strategy entail? We want to deal with inbound marketing techniques. It is important to understand this changing landscape of marketing, especially with the upcoming millennial market, and that is not all that is affected.
Many of the people beyond the millennial range, the boomers and the Xers are also being affected by moving into online and internet shopping.
Internet, inbound marketing strategies and techniques
Internet, inbound marketing is where we want to focus a lot of our activity.
- Search Engine Optimization
This is like inbound marketing one on one; you need to optimize your website to be found by the search engines. There is an art and a science to that. Engage somebody who understands website optimization really well, what words do you use in the titles?
How do you create that organic growth and where can people find you? This is one of the initial places you start with. Another one is unique words and what kind of words do you own in the mind of the customer? How do you optimize those words?
Many times, you cannot only optimize and use keywords, but you can also create words, which then allows people to find you if they know what words you’ve created. The words you use is a really big part of optimizing your website, and how people find you in the search engines. You’re going to have a lot of people approaching you about how they can get you on the front page of Google.
They can be artificial or organic growth, it is very different. The ideal situation is that you generate organic growth in search engine optimization that more and more people find you because you’re organically generating the right kinds of words, the right kinds of titles and articles on your website by more and more people engaging. Then you should be found by the search engines because you’ve got a lot of activities.
The other way that it happens is artificially is a go to market strategy where people will come to you and say we can put you on the front page of Google, and they can do that, but you’re going to pay a lot for that. You could start at a couple of thousand a month and go north really fast. The problem with the unofficial SEO is that you have to keep paying because as soon as you stop, if you don’t have organic growth, then you’re not found again. When you’re looking at SEO, you can do both artificial and organic searches.
Ultimately, you want to build organic growth to find you.
- Search Engine Marketing
This is where we look at things like Google AdWords and Facebook boost ads. The first thing to understand with search engine marketing is they’re not as cheap as they appear, they do cost money. If you’re paying 50 cents a click through, and then they start to look at your stuff and eventually buy the number of people buying based on those clicks that are coming through, you could be paying more than $100 per customer by the time they buy.
If your cost of customer acquisition is typically $400 or $500 or $1,000, $100 is a good price. If you’re selling a much less expensive product, then it’s not as cheap as it appears at 50 cents a click. Depending on the number of people actually buying, it can lead to a higher cost of acquiring a customer. These are very undervalued channels today, Facebook boost ads. When you look at Instagram and some of the others, they’re still undervalued.
Why? We’ve got a billion people on Facebook, following some flow or channel, and you’ve got this captivated group with the boost ads, you can do a lot of very specific ads that are boosted to different kinds of demographic and psychographic selections. However, right now the big money is not there.
Remember, 90% of the big money is still out in outbound marketing techniques. Once they start moving on to these platforms, these channels are going to start becoming more and more expensive quickly. Right now they’re still undervalued. This is the time to be looking at things like Facebook boost ads and some of the other social online marketing, paid advertising; the search engine marketing because it’s still undervalued.
- Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is significant and something to be looked at very strongly. It’s about influencers sharing your content. We’re talking about word of mouth being spread by people that influence those in your market.
One of the real keys to influencer marketing is that your product or service has got to align with the influencer’s interests. If they do, then how do you work with them to have them promote your product or your service? Is it because they sat through it and loved it so much?
I had a guy recently tell me that one of the things that you should do is make a list of the top 25 influencers in your market, and make it a goal to reach each one of them over the next year. Somehow to get to them. Give them your product, show them your product, and get them to use your product, get them to talk about your product. What would it take?
There are people that charge you to speak about it again, which is almost like affiliate marketing or paid word of mouth. Influencer marketing is a huge trend. Knowing that millennials rely so much on word of mouth from friends, influencers can have a very big impact. They may be 92%, more likely because of that word of mouth.
- Experiential marketing
Freemium, free trials, if millennials get to try something, they’re 96% more likely to buy. With your product or your service, is there some way to taste, touch or smell it? Before the customer buys it? Experiential marketing is very important.
I would tie it to the sales law of inertia if they start moving; it’s easier to keep them moving. If they are not moving, it’s very hard to get them moving in physics. If you can start them moving, it’s easier to keep them moving in the sales process. The sales law of inertia has let them try it for free. That is a step of activity. Then it’s easier to keep them moving. This is a very good go to market strategy for a new product.
- Affiliate Marketing
With affiliate marketing, other people are marketing your product or service. One of the greatest trends on the internet today is digital freelance marketing. You going to a store like Rei, recreational equipment, Inc. because you like outdoors, go down to the bottom of the website, look at their affiliate marketing programs, sign up, take their products that are hot, put them on your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat feeds, and if anybody buys that, because you posted it, I actually get an affiliate fee.
It’s called digital freelance marketing, paid word of mouth.
- Publicity & News Coverage
It is always a great idea to get some interest in your product or service. News agencies always look for stories. In the US, there’s a thing called Help A Reporter Out (HARO). Help A Reporter Out (www.helpareporter.com) is a website you can look up and talk with people about doing your story.
It is a way to broadcast what you’re doing creating this inbound marketing that they now come looking for you. It is a subtle go to market strategy.
- Curating Content
Anything that you create, that’s a value added or curated. That’s value-added content, testimonials, tools, offerings, viral growth posts, blogs and articles. You need to curate valuable content regularly and put it on your website.
Curating content is very valuable to the people that you work with or your audience. It helps them do what they’re doing better, and you’ve become a value to them.
- Authoring Content
In authoring content, you’re actually writing podcasts, writing blogs, white papers, books and YouTube stuff. It establishes your credibility as a subject matter expert. If that customer is not ready to make a decision, not ready to make a purchase, by continuing to give them value, they are going to come back to you when they’re ready to purchase.
All of these things add to inbound marketing opportunities with the internet.
Summary
What does a go to market strategy entail? It involves understanding your customer and using both inbound and outbound marketing techniques to reach out to the market. For a low-budget approach, you can rely on sales on the internet.
