Inbound marketing, a method born 15 years ago, has proven its effectiveness across many international markets. Yet it still hasn’t caught much attention or adoption from most SMEs, due to some limitations compared with the traditional outbound marketing approach.
So is COVID-19 the moment for businesses to find their own way forward through digital growth solutions built on this inbound marketing method?
1. What is inbound marketing? Its pros and cons
What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is a marketing approach carried out to create useful value for users, bringing customers the most helpful value and encouraging them to interact with the business. From there, the business uses specific tactics to reach, nurture, and increase the conversion rate of these customers.
This method was named and applied widely from 2006 onward in the US market by Hubspot’s two co-founders, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, and by now has spread globally (including Vietnam). It gives customers a more proactive role in engaging with a business, which in turn increases their satisfaction.
Inbound marketing attracts customers more effectively
Given all that, why haven’t SMEs in Vietnam embraced this method? On the contrary, they still rely on traditional ways to promote their products to consumers. Some businesses even still resort to blanket advertising that leaves viewers with a rather unpleasant impression.
A familiar traditional-medicine ad with the tagline: “My family has treated this for three generations…” — off-putting to viewers.
Let’s explore this method’s pros and cons together to understand why!
Advantages of inbound marketing
Besides letting potential customers proactively reach out to the business, making them feel more comfortable thanks to the value the business brings them, and building customer trust as described above — the biggest advantage of an inbound marketing campaign is that it helps improve a business’s ad budget, since the channels a business uses to communicate with customers are entirely its own, at close to zero cost.
As for outbound marketing, like the traditional-medicine ad example above — aside from customers feeling annoyed and having their mood dampened while watching their favorite YouTube shows interrupted by ads — spending a budget to cover every high-traffic YouTube channel (usually over 1 million views) also eats up a huge chunk of that business’s budget. See the two images below.
Setting up a test campaign similar to what the traditional-medicine business above did, with an unrestricted audience.
Setting CPV to 1 million and bidding at 100% for the best possible results.
With the results above, we can see that even after optimizing to the max, impressions only ranged from 2 million to 39 million views — nowhere close to the volume of ads we get bombarded with across every channel every single day. As a bonus: I also tried setting a budget of 1 billion VND over 10 days (the shorter the number of days, the higher the impression rate).
Disadvantages of inbound marketing
This is the most painful part whenever Big E Co. advises a business on an inbound marketing solution. While it doesn’t cost much, inbound marketing needs a very long time to bring the desired results (usually 6 months to a year).
Meanwhile, a business needs a solution that can help it earn steady monthly revenue to keep operations running smoothly. Because even though inbound marketing costs are close to zero, a business still needs to spend on activities that bring value to customers: content, landing pages, email, a customer-care and survey team, etc.
More examples of businesses worldwide successfully applying the inbound marketing model will be shared with you by the Easy Knowledge Channel team through the handbook “Market or Get Stuck,” Episode 1, Part 2.
2. COVID-19 — the right moment for startups and SMEs to invest in a digital growth solution built on the inbound marketing model
Why a digital growth solution based on inbound marketing?
That was my take on inbound marketing — a method proven in many countries (Vietnam included) — along with its strengths and weaknesses compared with outbound marketing. So why is COVID-19 the right moment to pursue a digital growth solution based on this model?
First, let’s talk about COVID-19 — a phenomenon that might be even hotter than the storm stirred up by Jack and Thiên An, or the clash between artists and CEO Phương Hằng recently, given it’s directly hitting the economy and operations of most businesses nationwide, with startups and SMEs bearing the brunt since most lack the resources to weather this period.
Next, consider the market currently under lockdown — every industry (except food and essential goods) has come to a halt. If a business aggressively pushes outbound marketing to find customers as fast and as widely as possible during this stage, it still can’t get products to consumers, and generates no revenue. Worse, if it overspends its budget, the business may no longer have enough capital to pay staff and maintain…
So why a digital growth solution built on inbound marketing?
If a business runs 100% pure inbound marketing, it’s very hard to build a customer base large enough (not that there’s no customers at all) to nurture once the pandemic passes.
- Scenario 1: Imagine you’re a brand-new business on the market, trying to bring the best value to your customers. But you don’t promote your product externally, quietly building good value for your customers instead. Now flip the perspective to the customer — would they trust you when you have absolutely nothing yet to prove that trust? The FOMO effect is always a deadly trap, since people always believe…
- Scenario 2: Say you already have a blog or social page full of useful information for potential customers — what happens if you just share it daily to forums and potential-customer groups on social media without any advertising? Of course it will still attract potential customers, but very few will know about you in the early stages (unless you’re a KOL, a celebrity, or have some other aesthetic advantage). To spread…
- Scenario 3: Say you’ve already built up to the point of a landing page with a call to action — will customers even see that link if you don’t advertise? If you’ve already built a large enough community before setting up the landing page, advertising can also boost the engagement rate with that landing page even more.
Based on these 3 scenarios, we can see that a small or medium business shouldn’t apply the inbound marketing model 100%. Instead, a digital growth solution based on the model above will be a better fit for your business.
So what is the Digital Growth Solution?
The Digital Growth Solution is a comprehensive service solution created to meet a business’s full, all-around marketing growth needs, including:
- Overall marketing planning support for the business
- Support in finding potential customers
- Designing a brand identity kit for the client
- Building a social media strategy for clients
- Offline marketing support for clients
- Building an overall SEO and inbound marketing strategy
What makes this special is that it will guide and build a marketing strategy following a 70% inbound model (outbound ads can be inserted at appropriate growth stages for the business, but only accounting for 30% of the overall marketing strategy — with the ultimate goal still being to help the business build its branding and increase leads, and to classify those leads so they can more easily handle the final step of closing sales and growing revenue).
Accordingly, the customer journey when a business applies the above solution looks like this:
Customer journey when applying the Digital Growth Solution for a business.
Digital Growth Solution case study
- Hoàn Thành Group
Big E Co. carried out the Digital Growth Solution for Hoàn Thành’s construction and interior-design service, SEO-ing several related keywords while also developing ads on Hoàn Thành’s Facebook channel.
- Gomery
Big E Co. carried out the Digital Growth Solution to grow Gomery’s social channels and sales advertising.
Learn more about applying the Digital Growth Solution to tackle marketing problems through real-life stories in the handbook “Market or Get Stuck” from the Easy Knowledge Channel team at Big E Co. Tap the book cover to sign up for the ebook now.
Sign up to receive the book for a chance to get an offer worth up to 3 million VND on digital marketing services and the Digital Growth Solution for businesses.
THE FOOL — EASY KNOWLEDGE CHANNEL