S1E6: Reaching Your Market
Beginner’s Guide to Inbound and Outbound Marketing
Picture this: you’re all on a big, exciting treasure hunt; chasing gold. You have a map, a compass, and a warship for this journey. You have set sail into the horizon, looking for your treasure. Competitors right on the side, with their ships - their strategies. All searching for one thing: Customers!
As your ship cuts through the waves, guided by the compass, you spot an island teeming with life. It looks so busy from far away, like a beehive, full of sounds and action. Markets full of traders shouting, streets bustling with people - it's a spectacle of commerce and chaos. Your hearts race with anticipation. Could this be the place where your treasure lies? You hurry off the ship, eager to find out.
You walk into the streets, your eyes wide with wonder. As you move through the crowds, you realize it's like a giant puzzle. Every turn and corner brings more noise and more people, but no sign of our treasure. You start to feel a bit lost in all the chaos.
Then, as you stand there in the middle, a realization slowly sinks in. The treasure just might not be here. Maybe the purpose of your journey isn't about finding the loudest spot, but about understanding where the true treasure lies. This underlines the importance of the intersection of your value proposition and customer pain points.
But let's say you've done your homework well. You know the exact problems your customers face and understand who your customers are. And then you spot an island, a big, HUGE island. This could be it!
But, can you search the whole island by yourself? And what if there are other islands out there with more customers waiting to be discovered?
A Super Crew
What if you had a huge team to help you find the treasure, not just a few people, but a whole 10,000? And you're not just searching one island, but hundreds of them! This way, you have a much better chance of finding your treasure.
To make a good treasure map, it should be simple and clear. This map can help you find lots of hidden treasures. These treasures are really people who would like to buy things from you.
The Two Paths to Treasure: Inbound and Outbound
In the realm of online business, you have two powerful strategies at your disposal, each important in its own right.
1) Inbound Marketing: The Long Game
Inbound marketing is like orchestrating a grand festival on your ship. You don't need to venture into the unknown to find your guests; you create an event so entertaining that customers are drawn to you.
The Festival's Highlights:
- Content Creation (Blogs, Articles): Each piece of content is an engraved invitation, enticing readers with the promise of valuable insights and knowledge. It's like a festival promising joy and entertainment. These kinds of events (content marketing) get three times more leads than paid search advertising. Source
- Social Media Engagement (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook): These platforms are your stages, where you share the festival's most captivating moments, engage with the crowd, and entice others to join the celebration. Businesses using social media have seen a 45% increase in revenue. Source
- SEO Strategies (Search Engines): Your lighthouse that ensures your festival's fame spreads across the digital sea, bringing treasure seekers from near and far to your festivities. With 68% of online experiences beginning with a search engine, SEO is more crucial than ever. Source
Patience is key with inbound marketing. The customers we discover tend to stay longer because they chose to journey to us. Statistics show that inbound marketing strategies can increase marketing ROI by up to 300% (Secret? - it costs less) Source
2) Outbound Marketing: The ‘Now’ Game
In stark contrast, outbound marketing is like commandeering a fleet of speedboats. These quick vessels dart across the seas, deftly navigating to where the treasure is.
The Speedboat's Tools:
- Email Campaigns: These are like precision-crafted messages shot from a cannon, landing directly into the potential customer's inbox, keeping them updated and engaged. For every dollar spent on email marketing, the average return is $42. Source
- Cold Outreach: A direct call can be as impactful as a personal visit. It's about making that personal connection that could lead to a bucket full of opportunities. Even in the digital age, cold email has a successful response rate of %10. Source
- Paid Ads (Google, Facebook): Invest in advertising to appear right where your customers are browsing, ensuring your brand catches their eye. Paid advertising boasts an average return of $2 for every $1 spent—a 200% ROI. Source
This approach is immediate, spreading your name super fast, and announcing your presence to every potential customer across the seas.
Charting the Course Ahead
As we plot our course through these dual strategies, we lay the groundwork for a successful voyage. With inbound marketing, we build a haven that attracts and retains, while outbound strategies allow us to reach further and faster than ever before.
Remember, the treasure we seek does not simply await us—it requires a bold strategy and a crew ready to embark on the journey. As we sail forward, let's keep our maps close, our compasses set, and our marketing strategies sharp.
If you're not following our treasure hunt so far, here's a quick recap. We have learnt how to find our treasure map, and how to develop a navigation system that takes us directly to the gold, and now we have figured out how to amplify our efforts so that we have the opportunity to reach lots and lots of treasures at the same time.
Next up, we figure out how to transform our potential treasure into actual loot.
Housekeeping:
- Keep an eye out for our series: ‘How to Grow Online.’
- You've just unraveled how to ‘Reach Your Customers’ - S1E6.
- Revisit our previous adventure ‘Clearing Objections?’ - S1E5.
- Next up: S1E7: ‘Money, Money, Make Money!’
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