How to Get Your Boss Onboard with Inbound!

Now that you’ve boosted your SEO strategy, you’re ready to explore new and engaging techniques that will improve your company’s marketing efforts. You’ve done the research, collected statistics, and have determined a plan of action.

The next phase in your marketing strategy? Integrate an inbound marketing approach that will help your company grow and adapt to changing trends, technologies, and consumer expectations.

But, because the marketing world is always changing, you might have to spend some time convincing your boss to get on board with inbound. Even as an accomplished marketing professional, sales representative, or communications expert, trying to convince your boss to adopt an inbound marketing strategy can be both intimidating and time consuming.

So, rather than waiting for that perfect pause during the staff meeting, or the subtle first-thing-on-Monday e-mail, Symetric wants to share a few tips that will help you convince your boss to invest in inbound marketing.

What You Need to Know About Inbound

In order to see tangible success with inbound marketing, it’s crucial to get everyone on board with the process. Your team will have to mobilize so that you can continue to not only adapt the overall digital strategy, but also invest time into meeting company goals.

However, if inbound isn’t something your team has much experience with you can start by using these four steps to communicate the value of inbound to your team and your boss.

1. Educate: What Exactly Is Inbound Marketing?

Yes, start with a definition. Even though we understand that SEO, outbound, and inbound are all related to each other, their relationship to one another makes it difficult to define their differences.

Essentially, inbound marketing incorporates aspects of SEO, paid ads, blogging, and social media to appeal to your customers’ needs and pain points. Search Engine Journal points out that, “Instead of forcing your message on everyone to see, inbound marketing encourages customers to come to you.” This contrasts with more aggressive outbound tactics, which can be perceived as less personal because of its content and delivery: Think promotional e-mails (outbound) versus a how-to blog (inbound).

2. Inbound Is A Worthy Investment (And Not Just in The Monetary Sense!)

When you’re selling the idea of inbound to your boss, it’s crucial to acknowledge that inbound marketing will require your company to invest both money and time. So, when you’re ready to approach your boss, you must arm yourself with data that conveys not only how much money will be invested in inbound, but also why that investment is worth it.

If your boss raises financial concerns, one source estimates that leads generated by inbound marketing are “more cost effective for smaller businesses, with a savings of 64% in cost per lead for companies with 1-25 employees and 68% for those with 51-200 employees.” Do not back down from utilizing inbound marketing techniques just because you’re a small business. Inbound will pay off by attracting qualified leads, as opposed to outbound, which may target leads that want nothing to do with your product.

In addition to investing in new add-ons and strategies, you will have to incorporate new programs and technology to replace your existing software, which means your boss should spend time and money training staff and re-allocating their tasks. And while using a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager), CMS (Content Management System) or creating paid Google Ads can seem overwhelming from a financial point of view, the long-term benefits of inbound will far out way the cost of upgrading your system.

Finally, because inbound harnesses the power of the search engine, you can spend less money on traditional ads and outbound marketing in favor of techniques that allow the customer to find you.

3. How Inbound Marketing Works

Your boss may not fully understand why the company should switch to inbound marketing. After all, what can it really do?

Explain how your inbound strategy will be built around providing customers with the ultimate experience, and how it uses real data to appeal to consumer interests.

Consider the following examples to gain a better understanding of how outbound and inbound techniques serve customers:

1. 1. Inbound Strategy: A roofing company decides to use inbound marketing techniques to promote its fall services. Their marketing team puts together a blog that will help homeowners assess their roofs for damage and how to protect their roof in winter. In addition to sending it to everyone on their e-mail list, the company also uses SEO to optimize their blog for search engines, like Google and creates several targeted ads that appeal to consumers looking to inspect their roof or redo their roof.

Outcome: These resources attract consumers that are not only interested in learning more about roof repair, but also thinking about booking an inspection or installation. The intent behind their search means that they relate to the content and are eager to learn more and make a purchase.

1. 2. Outbound Strategy: A roofing company pays to send out an e-mail blast, several hundred flyers, and conduct many cold sales calls to get new leads. They’re accepting new bookings for the fall and hope to attract customers that need their roof repaired before winter.

Outcome: Because they weren’t targeting a specific audience, the company gets some leads over the next few days. But, over time, the traffic tapers off. Because the ads weren’t targeting a specific audience, most of the recipients were disinterred in the e-mail and could not relate to its content.

Guide your boss through the inbound process to show them what inbound marketing will look like for your company and your consumers. Whether you create your own presentation, gather various statistics, or watch a few testimonials, provide your boss with examples of how inbound transforms the way you interact with your customers and your team.

4.  You Always Have Time for Inbound

When you approach your boss about switching up your marketing strategy, they may genuinely feel like there is no time to transition to inbound. They might give you the old, “Now isn’t a good time, maybe next year,” routine. And they’re entitled to feel overwhelmed: Changing your marketing strategy is nerve wracking, time consuming, and unfamiliar.

But, if the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s the importance of adapting with our consumers. In fact, roughly “61% of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority,” which means your company can’t afford to put inbound on the backburner.

Ask your boss to consider the needs of the consumer: Does your current strategy meet customer demands? Are you confident that your strategy can adapt quickly to accommodate changing expectations? After all, going for inbound doesn’t mean dropping your outbound techniques altogether—you can even use outbound marketing to fuel upcoming inbound strategies and get ahead of your competitors!

Did you know? Recent statistics have shown that “organic search leads have a 14.6% close rate, compared to 1.7% for outbound marketing leads” That’s a substantial difference for businesses that rely solely on outbound tactics.

Is Your Company Ready to Switch to Inbound Marketing?

Once you’ve made the decision to revitalize and focus your marketing efforts by incorporating inbound methodologies, you can set goals and conduct research that will help you understand, and connect with, your audience.

Find out how you can get access to a free CRM with Symetric: Packed with a variety of marketing and sales tools, this CRM will help you kick off your inbound marketing journey with cutting-edge technology. In addition to on improving SEO strategies, implementing new software in your company will lend you crucial insights, statistics, and feedback on how your customers are interacting with your website. Contact us today to learn how to adapt and grow your business in an increasingly digital landscape.