Inbound marketing is like dating. Like any prospective date, before your customers can you trust what you have to offer, you must first build a relationship of trust. If you don't, it will cost you — literally.
Wondering how to reach the right audience in a crowded market? We created this guide based on our industry experience guiding SaaS clients like you to success.
Before launching into this list of absolute do nots, make sure you have an awesome website first. Having an optimized, user-friendly website that is visually appealing and well-organized is a must. Now that that's settled, let's get down to the nitty gritty.
Here are 4 of the most common rookie marketing mistakes that keep the ball from rolling...
Even if your product or service will save the world, you're still going to need to market it. There's no doubt that word-of-mouth is the best version of marketing in the world. But, in case you haven't noticed, people don't "talk" all that much anymore.
Word-of-mouth happens more like word-of-text or word-of-share — and requires marketing so people have something to share or pass on when they're sharing the good news about you.
Once upon a time you could blog away without any goals other than, "create blog fodder to gain SEO status." That's because old-school web crawlers cared only for keywords and phrases. That's all in the past now. In this era of uncannily human-like, algorithmic machines, content must have context. It needs to connect to other pieces of content; it needs to build a story that leads to a killer landing page; in short — everything you post requires purpose.
There should be clearly mapped relationships between every piece of content you post and share. Together, they form a wide web — cleverly cast to net qualified leads. Read, Keep it Simple SaaS Marketer for a closer look at developing successful inbound marketing strategies.
Unless you're a numbers person, data is scary — and time consuming. However, analyzing metrics is essential to learning how website visitors interact with your content — what you need more of and what's not working. If you don't tune in to data, your efforts are like shots in the dark, rather than well-aimed fires at a defined target.
There's a perfect segue into what is arguably the largest of the inbound marketing mistakes — not truly understanding who your target market really is. As a tech whiz, it's easy to forget that most people are Luddites by comparison — and they need a lot of bottom — and middle-funnel marketing to land the sale.
The best thing you can do is get up close and personal with the people who currently use your product — as well as the ones who stopped using it — so you can learn what makes your target market tick. Check out, The Ultimate Guide to SaaS Marketing for Healthcare, for more information on homing in on your target market.
The good news is that all inbound marketing mistakes are reversible. You can tweak existing content to leverage what you've learned, and future marketing efforts will ensure new content flies over that hump. Working with a SaaS marketing agency can streamline this process. Spot On has helped many SaaS companies implement a winning inbound marketing strategy. To learn more, book a meeting here.
