Many people probably don’t remember the book, “A Random Walk Down Wall Street” but the quote it contains: “a 
blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper’s financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by the experts” is a classic reminder that strategic decision making can be fatally flawed. Advertising is actually one discipline that probably comes to mind first when it comes to making precarious business decisions. Millions can be spent without ever realizing a dime of return. Why? Advertising in the traditional sense has become somewhat relegated. Ever heard of banner blindness? Unfortunately, we’re training ourselves to look past anything distracting from our primary activity or purpose.
The Shift from Outbound to Inbound Advertising
Savvy advertisers have shifted from outbound advertising to inbound advertising. Instead of pushing information down the customer’s throats with outbound advertising (which is losing steam because today’s consumer is totally overwhelmed with oncoming information), advertisers have been asking themselves, How can I get found?
Two of the most well-known types of inbound marketing are SEO & PPC:
- SEO – Organic search is one of the largest sources of traffic for almost all merchants. It’s important to set your website up properly to get the most out of the search engines. Once you have picked the keywords that you would like to go after, create pages that include those keywords in the url, meta tags, page name and body content.
- PPC – A great way to quickly drive traffic to your store, but make sure that you are sending people to the most relevant landing page and watching your costs. Continue to optimize and improve your campaigns by adding new keywords or removing under-performing ones.
Inbound Jam
While both of these advertising methods have become highly effective, it’s important to consider that many marketers are now on the inbound advertising train. That means you’re not the only one with that unique aroma floating through the internet waves pulling in the customers who have a nose for your stuff. Now the airwaves are inundated with every signal imaginable, so even inbound marketers can’t rely solely on SEO and PPC anymore.
Traditions Still Matter
We recommend pulling some of your more effective traditional marketing tools back out, and blending them with your inbound campaigns.
For example, email is still a useful form of communication, and because you’re marketing to the loyal customers who care what you’re saying, this outbound method will probably provide the best ROI on your marketing dollars. But don’t rely on a static list, give new website visitors incentives (deals, discounts, white papers, etc.) to join your mailing list. You’ll be rewarded with more loyal shoppers as long as you continue to meet and deliver on their expectations.
Hybrid Approach
Social media is viewed by most as an outbound marketing tool. Social managers are, after all, posting company/product news, but the difference is tri-fold:
- Customers choose to follow social accounts because they want the news.
- Customers don’t just get new product info. thrown down on them through social. Social actually offers opportunities for discussion, which gives makes it both inbound and outbound, since fans/followers come in and sit down for coffee table talks about products, etc.
- Search engines are indexing posts and the links associated with them, which makes it easy for those looking to find and join the social conversations in which they’re interested.
Don’t Let Customer Service Out of Sight
Customer attention isn’t the only rarity these days. When was the last time you received uninterrupted personal attention from a knowledgeable merchant rep.? A common complaint about today’s business is the lack of customer service–real customer service where there’s someone on the line with you for more than 30 seconds.
Along with pulling out all the stops to advertise, it’s smart to go back to the reason most of us ever consider buying in the first place–the people from who we buy! If you really want your advertising to work, make sure you’re treating your customer right once you get them in the door!
