This isn’t a sales pitch, it’s a promise. Inbound marketing is no more suited to a large organisation, than it is an SME - or even startups!
It’s perfect for businesses of all sizes and sectors, but it might reap quicker rewards for small businesses. Why? They typically have little money to invest in high-cost traditional marketing.
Generally speaking, marketing is no easy task for a startup, you have to attract an audience and the old tactics of buying mailing lists just won’t cut it.
That's where inbound really demonstrates its value - it draws people to you using mostly free (if you wish) digital marketing activities.
For a startup or SME, keen to market their business and services, inbound is perfect if you’re better suited to invest resources, as opposed to finances, into your inbound marketing efforts.
What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is a methodology - it’s not a physical tactic or activity. It's the belief that by helping people to learn more about their problems and challenges and the potential solutions - your products and services - they will become a loyal and trustworthy “fan”. By continuing to nurture - educate and provide helpful, relevant information - you can turn them into a customer.
Choosing to delight - educate, entertain - as opposed to disrupt - advertise unexpectedly (billboards, TV ads etc.), talk at them - will create more trust and brand loyalty in potential customers and they will be more likely to “promote” you to their networks - free promotion!
How can inbound marketing work for small businesses and startups?
By adopting an “inbound approach”, as we like to say, you need to be willing and able to put time into setting up content marketing activities.
Popular methods are:
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Blogging
It will allow you to use less money, but take more time honing your content marketing activities. By focusing on content marketing activities, you will benefit from:
Low cost marketing: They are typically free, but if you want to invest into these activities you can for better/faster results, but it’s optional.
Positive digital footprint: Reach people where they’re actively searching and be found by them in their own time.
Build a place for your customers to gather and share information: By adopting social media and engaging with your audience as it grows you will gain loyal support and your fans will only encourage others to feel positively about your brand.
Is HubSpot right for small businesses and startups?
No. To expand on that - typically speaking, no.
From the outset, we want to provide organisations with helpful solutions and although HubSpot is an amazing platform to carry out the automation of content marketing tactics, it is a considerable expensive even for large organisations.
If you’re a tech startup with considerable financial resources, you may want to consider a low level of HubSpot, but otherwise, we’d start with an inbound marketing strategy - such as our Thriveability Plan - which will outline the content marketing you need to conduct.
Of course, what we will encourage all organisations to adopt, is the FREE version of the HubSpot CRM and HubSpot Free - the free version of the marketing platform, so you can get an insight of how your inbound marketing approach can evolve.
By starting out and getting the content marketing activities perfectly suited, you will find it easier to introduce HubSpot at a higher level later on, and be setup to benefit from the automated approach that HubSpot delivers.
If you have any questions about HubSpot, inbound marketing, our Thriveability Plan or how we can provide a demo and free trial of HubSpot for your business, please call Johnny Woods on 01325 778 786 or email us at hello@thriveability.co.uk.
