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Traditional advertising and sales are going to die and if you don’t adopt this new methodology, you will be left in the dust.
I’m going to show you something will change the way you get customers forever, plus make it easier and way more sustainable.
You won’t ever have to cold call again.
(And even if you continue cold calling, it will increase your success 10-fold).
Would you like to have a machine that automatically brings you customers?
…A way to get your customers to contact YOU to ask you questions, without any outreach?
Let’s get right into it:
The 1.2 Million Dollar Problem
I want to tell you a little story.
I recently went in to consult with a friend’s business. They were doing good revenue ($10MM / year). They were also selling an expensive product ($3k+ plus, with high margins) so this was an interesting business.
They were basically a sales organization. They had an entire room full of employees and it basically works like this.
- They bought an enormous list of leads for a couple hundred thousand dollars.
- They have a team that cold calls the leads they bought and tries to set up a demo.
- They have a “sales” team that sells them.
This works enough to bring in the revenue, but they have a huge problem.
It’s hard as hell to actually get someone on the phone.
The biz dev team just calls and calls and uses all kinds of psychological tricks to attempt to get someone to agree to stay on the phone for 30 seconds so they can pitch them.
It’s a really tough job. They make hundreds of calls a day.
This works but it’s really, really hard.
..And on top of that, this team that does the cold calling is EXPENSIVE. Every time they get hung up on, its just dollars down the toilet.
Lots of employees that start on the cold call team end up getting fired. There is low morale. They are trying to devise ways that they can increase sales, but if they can’t get someone on the phone, they can’t make the sale.
If they don’t change they are going to get left in the dust.
Why This Isn’t Going To Work
The way sales works has changed. Drastically.
1) Consumers don’t get sold anymore, they do their own research.
They are smarter and better equipped to make decisions. Now they don’t even go to a restaurant without checking reviews. They will look up reviews about you. Hell, they look up reviews about anything.
This toilet paper on Amazon alone has 5000+ REVIEWS.
Think about that for a second.
2) Consumers HATE being bombarded and are nearly oblivious to hard-sell ads.
They hate ads (Adblock alone has 144 MILLION USERS and the creator reportedly makes millions via donations and a rumored $25 million from Google to whitelist their ads – Anyways, a HUGE deal).
So yeah people HATE ads.
3) Consumers ignore everything.
They don’t pick up their phones. Hell, they barely respond to messages from their friends!
(Some of my messages go hours or even days without a response. One girl I was trying to date literally replied A MONTH LATER like it was normal. Hahaha!!!!)
So how do you reach them in a world of overwhelming advertising, smarter consumers that generally ignore everything?
Here’s The Answer:
You don’t advertise to them.
You help them.
All these people still have problems and needs. They don’t want to hear about your product. They want to hear how to solve their problems.
This is called Inbound Marketing and the time to start using it is NOW.
Inbound Marketing is all about ATTRACTING your audience to you instead of pushing your product on them.
Inbound Marketing is all about creating content that will help your target customer – Answering their questions, solving their problems, and starting a relationship.
Once the relationship starts, they will begin to trust you as an authority and be curious about what solutions you have that can solve their problems.
Then you have 5000x the power.
They like you, they know you, they trust you, and then they buy from you.
Here’s the Hocus-Pocus Unicorn Dust Part
So this is the part where I would say it’s all about ‘quality content‘ and you would throw your hands up in the air and laugh at my face.
Well, let me show you how we use inbound / content marketing to actually put dollars in the bank.
It’s simple:
- We identify problems that our target customer has.
- We write articles about them & publish them on our blog.
- We promote those posts though our email list, Facebook, twitter, etc.
- Our customers find them, read them, then see us as an authority.
- They get curious about our solutions.
- They book & hop on a call with one of our account managers.
- Account managers have the easiest sell in the world because the lead already knows, likes and trusts us.
If you do this, instead of cold calling, you’ll have leads coming to you. You’ll have people booking their own meetings with YOU.
You will never have to cold call again.
How to Get Started – The Easy Way
This sounds insanely simple, but that’s the beauty:
You need to start a blog.
On this blog, you will create content that helps your target audience. You need to keep posts rolling on a consistent basis.
Think of the top problems that your target customer has and write your answer to them in the form of a blog post. Show them how to solve their problems.
Think about top objections or questions that you get all the time. Write a blog post about each one.
You will start to rank for all sorts of keywords and long tails. Your target customers are searching for the answers to their questions.
When they land on your blog post, you’ll want to get them to opt-in to your email list.
You can do this with a Popup Like OptinMonster or a Hellobar.
Once they are on your list, you just send them all the other content you created and then give them a chance to reach out to you.
Want Some Help?
The biggest problem is that most people don’t have time to write blog posts. You have other more important things to do. It takes a long time, and it takes someone who is actually skilled at writing.
That’s why we created HOTH Blogger.
HOTH Blogger is the easiest way to get started with Inbound Marketing. We’ll create high-quality blog posts for your blog every month and really build a substantial base of content that will attract your target customers to you.
Even if you don’t do any current cold calling, this will help attract customers. This is the model for the future of advertising.
Click here to check out HOTH Blogger.
Any questions? Leave them in the comments!
Some great content here. I definitely think inbound marketing is the future and a lot more profitable and beneficial for your customers.
Made a list of the key steps and will be trying this myself.
Interesting, but what would you do if you are in a small town, and there are not many people looking for your innovative services, you still have to spread the word you exist? Thanks
It depends. What is the service?
Sebastian,
I have found that customers can appreciate things they can touch and feel much better than they can with abstract things, especially if they are small and local businesses (which is my area of specialization).
For example, I am working with a prospect for SEO services where I suggested my client needed a cleaner website with easy navigation and more content so we could execute a good SEO strategy. She was very reluctant. So I created a weebly site to show her the potential for what her site could look like. This took initiative on my part but it was highly appreciated by her because it showed her exactly what her site could be. It takes the discussion from “trust me” to “see for yourself”.
Your company is in the video production business. Take one of your clients for whom you generated a lot of sales because your video shared on Facebook, Yelp, YouTube…and it drove traffic to your client’s site and tangible results to their top line.
Create a car study around that customer. Then like the Hoth suggests, put that case study on a blog and announce the blog post by email to your prospects. If people read through the case study and email/call you, 75% of the sale is already done – the remaining 25% is stuff like pricing, timing etc (and not the product/service offering).
Hope this helps.
Sanjay Raghavan, small business lead gen ninja
Smallbusinessleadgen.com
Awesome Stuff, this has giving me a lot of ideas, I’m checking out Hoth Blogger now!
Totally makes good sense , I understand local business operators have more to accomplish than time in one day..to find out what is the answer to making profits is to speak directly (if they have time to listen). Survey perhaps with a token gesture of a video on 1st page on their business ..got to win hearts and minds I concur. Give and take both win.
One of those rare occasions where I actually agree with everything that was said in this post. It all jives with what I’ve experienced. I signed up for the newsletter and looking forward to reading more.
Great inbound marketing idea. I will try it my next project. Thanks
Great information like always. I agree with clients/customers don’t want to be sold too. I usually use the educating approach that allows me to build up a relationship.
One thing I never thought about that you mentioned was to add a popup on posts. I will try this method to increase my out reach while building a list of potentials.
Jose
I am becoming a bigger fan of The Hoth everyday. You guys are doing great work, thanks for all the outreach you do to push the narrative of what it takes to be successful online in 2016.
Ron
Great content… good vision..
I agree with you, inbound marketing is the future.. honestly, I hate cold calling.. I will never answer unrecognized incoming call…
All the best Sir…
If the content is as good as this sales copy you might have a new customer!
Hey guys I looked at the service, the blogging part is there, where in the service does the “We promote those posts though our email list, Facebook, twitter, etc.” come in?
thanks
You will want to promote the posts on your own social channels, email list etc, it’s not part of the service.
Can you use blog posts for non SEO services? We do app development for associations and organizations (downtowns, cities, wine regions ect) and outreach to new customers is always a chore
Yes, 99.999999% of what we write about with our Blog service is not SEO.
Great article. I think the Hoth Blogger service might be a great timesaver and a great way to build credibility and authority. And dropping in the occasional affiliate link would be great. 🙂
Wow, I am blown away by your bog, the information here is just priceless.
As someone who hates cold calling, I am definitely more comfortable about starting a blog, and I have done so. Now, I just need to commit to writing a few good content pieces a month . . . again thank you so much for sharing!
Very nice article and the principle makes perfect sense.
Becoming an authority is key, defining your position within the marketplace takes many forms. We focus on Industry reports, producing content that promotes a sensible overview really helps.
Thanks for the post.
Great post.
HOTH rocks, you guys are owning the content marketing game.
Keep it up!
Great content. Definitely agree inbound marketing is the way to go.
Great stuff, just discovered you guys and liking you advise and content..placed a few orders and looking forward to the results…going to give Hoth blogger a try.
Great content as also, I love how your post is also a prefect example of the strategy in use
Just signed up and looks done not bad 🙂
Love recursion. Blog about inbound marketing which is actually….. inbound marketing.
Its all part of the Customer Acquisition Process.
I like love, love you guys.
We’ve been blogging fo years now and it definitely works. Although we’ve also moved onto combining video into our blog posts and the SEO benefit has been huge. Even though we’re just a small company we outrank nearly all of our much larger local competition.
Very important & perfect guidance to us.Thanks for nice post.
I got an online business in Canada and my custumer are for the moment only french. Did you write article with french content? Or you only do english work?
Thanks alot guys!
Raphael
Bonjour Raphael, currently we only write in English on our own site. Hope this article was helpful for you!
Great post. Sales has definitely changed and we need to change too.
Inbound Marketing is not new. The “concept” of inbound marketing was born in 2005, after the phrase was coined by HubSpot’s co-founder Brian Halligan. Anyways great article and news about the Hoth Blogger!
You’re absolutely right to give credit where it’s due for the concept of inbound marketing. Thanks for your kind words on the article!
I think your points nos. 5,6 & 7 in your “Insanely Simple” list are overboard with optimism regarding customer response. Truthfully, does that really happen? Every time? I doubt it.
How is this all not like “inside sales” which has been around since the early 1900s when telephones in homes and offices became more and more prevalent. Ad agencies with legions of copywriters were producing direct mail pieces, full page ads in prominent magazines, advertorials in newspapers, catalogs, info packets, posters, sandwich boards and billboards all of which asked the reader to pick up their telephone and respond. It was/is creative content and very much so another form of attraction marketing. And all you have done with your blog is transform the method of content delivery for a SALES process that’s been around for over a century.
Hey Juan! Thanks for sharing your take on this 😀
Sure, it doesn’t happen every time for every person who comes across our blog posts, but people DO sign up all the time (daily) after reading our posts!
I think if you’re starting from square one (no email list, no posts ranking to appear in the search results, no social media following) it can sound overly optimistic. But this really works, your blog posts are a form of sales letter.
Here’s why this is different from the example you mentioned: all of those forms of advertising are PUSHING the product or service and trying to get people to get interested and buy it. Posts that are a full tutorial for how to do something, on the other hand, exist primarily as educational pieces of content. The fact that they appear on our marketing site, and the fact that we provide a path from that educational content to our sales pages, doesn’t necessarily make the marketing method itself similar.
To put it simply: an ad like you mentioned says, “Here’s this, come and buy it.” A blog post the way we’re talking here says, “Here’s how to solve the problem you just looked up a solution for. By the way, this is who we are and what we offer for solutions if you don’t want to do it on your own.”
I’ve been reading a lot of your advice. What I don’t understand and is so incredibly annoying is the use of immediate pop ups on your site? Not, just yours, as it’s being used everywhere, but it’s such an interruption where one is trying to get to the reading of the information. Just something I can’t understand as a user of information. Is the reasoning data driven and in the long run does that data really show it was worth it? Just thinking out loud! lol I am no expert. That’s why I am here trying to learn.
Hi Cheryl! Your question is a VERY fair one to ask. I think most of us would agree that pop-ups are, in general, annoying. That being said, they DO work. When you have a lot of people landing on your site and you want them to take an action before leaving, a simple addition of a pop-up absolutely increases the # of people taking that action on your site.
So in our view, it’s worth the annoyance it causes to some people because in the long run having the popups creates more success. The key is making popups that are relevant to the user, so we try to provide people the opportunity to save money by using our popups to promote any sales we have going on or gain more information related to what they’re looking for.
You might want to try an “exit popup” for your own purposes, it only appears once someone is about to leave your site. Happy to answer any other questions you have on this. Thanks!
Great advice. A tutorial on how to do the keyword research for a content strategy to put this into action would be great.
Thanks Keith! Check out this article: https://www.thehoth.com/blog/long-tail-keywords/ and this one https://www.thehoth.com/blog/blog-post-ideas/
I’m an inbound marketer myself and I found your take on it quite appealing! Great job with keeping the article so succint yet data-backed and interesting.
In case you, anyone wants to read a more detailed and content-packed guide, here’s one that I’ve written:
https://blog.arcsncurves.com/blog/ultimate-guide-running-inbound-marketing-campaign-uae
Contains more than 6,000 words and explains the inbound marketing process in more detail with action steps! 🙂
Thanks, Abdul!
Content marketing can help a lot to sell without being so direct. Writing recipes is one way to put out content that sells, because you can specify your brand’s products in the recipes and link to their product pages as well so that someone who sees the recipe can find and buy the product. There are other types of content that can sell, and also get links to help you rank. Check out this article: https://www.thehoth.com/blog/what-is-quality-content/
My blog is responsible for about 90% of my leads. My sales directly correlate with the number of quality blog posts I publish. If I get “busy” and stop publishing, I see a dip in sales, so I have learned to prioritize blogging and consistently publish. Sometimes, I don’t get any response for a few months, then all of sudden an older blog takes off and begin generating tons of leads. The awesome thing is, the time and/or money spent on creating that blog continues to make money for you. Quality content is the secret sauce, and quality links will follow with great content.
I agree 100% Patrick. Thanks a lot for sharing your insight!
Great article. Content is still king. Organic traffic/content marketing converts at a higher level than cold calling. I would assume cold calling was outdated, but then again maybe not.
Very helpful post, A perfect way explain inbound marketing in siple words 5/5.
Great article. Content is king always. We have used your service and yes it works.
Very useful article. The words what you used its simple and awesome.
This is very helpful information. Made some notes which am going to implement right away. Attracting customer to you by providing them with helpful, useful and insightful information is really the future of marketing. Content is key. I couldn’t agree more.
I have used this inbound trick already on education sector, although for local audiences without blogging. It was something to build confidence among the potential customers. It takes a bit time, but end of the day, you would have some nice people who will stay for long this is because as the writer said, it’s all about trust. anyway, nice article, now getting more confident! Thank you Jhonson!