Grow your business on a budget with inbound marketing

You may have heard the term ‘inbound marketing’, but what exactly is it? And, how can it help you grow your business on a budget? Inbound marketing is simply the term used to describe a type of marketing that brings potential customers (or leads) and customers to you through creating content that is useful and valuable to your customer base.

Tens of thousands of businesses around the world use inbound marketing to grow their reach, and the good news is that it usually costs much less than traditional marketing techniques.

A decade ago, a tactic called “outbound marketing” may have worked just fine, and spending big bucks on traditional advertising, cold calling and buying email lists were once all viable ways to grow your customer base. Now, your prospective clients have wised up to these outdated tactics and are blocking out the ‘noise’.

Inbound marketing provides a solution to this, by helping your brand be valuable, helpful and useful to your customers, beyond the immediate service you offer.

Through creating great content you can add value to the lives of your prospective customers. Your content can naturally drive their interest in your brand, and you can begin to create meaningful connections that are ready to be converted into living, breathing clients!

Attracting Your Ideal Customers

The first step on your journey towards making marketing that people love, is creating content online that appeals to the audience you want to attract.

Grow your business on a budget by defining exactly who these people are by creating a framework for your ideal customer. Start by asking yourself ‘what are their goals?’ and ‘what are their challenges?’ If you need some guidance, you can use the MakeMyPersona tool which guides you through the process step-by-step.

Once you’ve defined your audience, you can think about creating content that’s going to be useful to them. You can do this by blogging on your website to start with.

Is there a question you’re constantly being asked by customers? Is there something they’re interested in learning about that relates to your industry?

These questions are great starting points for determining what content you decide to create to add value to your audience.

For example, if you’re a hairdresser, you might find a lot of customers come to you with questions about hair styles for special occasions like weddings and graduations. The chances are there are lots of people searching for the answer to that question online, too. So, you might think about creating a blog post entitled ‘5 Elegant Hair Styles for Bridal Parties’.

The point here is not to sell your service directly to the reader, but to present your company as being knowledgeable on the topic.

At the end of a blog post like this, you might choose to add a non-pushy call-to-action, suggesting the reader can get in touch for a free consultation if they’re thinking about hairstyles for their wedding.

Getting Your Content Seen by Prospective Customers

Sharing your content online helps to attract traffic to your website, and helps your prospective customers discover how useful your brand is to them by reading the great content you’ve written. In turn, this establishes trust and creates a positive sentiment towards your company.

Social Media

One of the easiest ways to get your content seen is to start sharing it by posting links to your blog posts on your social media channels. Asking your friends and family to do the same can help to introduce your brand to new potential customers outside your immediate circle.

For example, someone who is planning their wedding could see your ‘5 Elegant Hair Styles for Bridal Parties’ blog post on social media, click through to read it, and then get in touch to see if you can recreate one of the styles you showcased in the blog post for them, or even for their bridesmaids.

If you want to learn a little more about using social media to attract interest in your brand, but don’t feel like you have the time to commit to using social media for your business, check out this blog post on 6 Tips for Scaling Social Media Promotion With a One-Person Team. An easy way to make sure you are using your time efficiently and maximizing your day is to plan your social media ahead of time, our Salon Social Media Planner is a useful tool get you on track fast!

Email Marketing to Grow your Business on a Budget

You can also share your content with your existing database periodically via email. Try to mix it up in terms of the content you send to ensure people don’t get tired of the same format and subsequently stop clicking through to your website.

For example, someone who came in for a hair colouring consultation previously may have shared their email address with you at the time. Although that person never became a customer, six months later you might send them an email pointing them to your new blog post on ‘5 Elegant Hair Styles for Bridal Parties’. That person might be a bridesmaid for a wedding coming up, and consequently pass on the blog post to the bride for inspiration, who then calls and asks if you can recreate some of the styles for her bridal party.

There are many other ways you can promote your content to take your inbound marketing to the next level, such as guest blogging on websites that relate to your industry, creating newsworthy content to secure media coverage, and much more. If you’re just getting started with inbound marketing, you can scale your strategy to include these types of promotion once you feel comfortable with the basics.

Expanding Your Knowledge of Inbound Marketing

As you might have guessed, there’s lots more to be explored when it comes to making inbound marketing work for your small business.

More detail on everything we’ve covered in this blog post – as well as a whole host of additional invaluable advice from HubSpot and Timely’s inbound marketing experts – is available for free in our ebook: ‘How to Grow Your Business on a Budget’.

Download the guide now and find out how to reach your goals and stick to your budget with these clever inbound marketing tactics.