If, like me you’re now fed up of people using the four letter word; GDPR! You’re probably asking yourself, how do we actually market our business to suspects past the 25th May 2018?
We’re getting all these emails about updated privacy policies and asking us to re-subscribe to an email marketing list. People are going on about it like its doomsday for businesses.
The new rules will prevent certain aspects of business that have been practiced since business first started marketing, but, there are some major positives to take from this legislation.
And yes, we’re bound to say this as it puts us in a great standing as we’re the experts in inbound marketing. But, what can you actually do to keep on the right side of the rules and keep your marketing moving?
What are the positives of GDPR?
As a marketer I feel this is a positive move, in general, towards a better and easier life. I mean we get so many unsolicited emails, phone calls, direct mail etc. that it sometimes becomes a bit overwhelming.
I subscribe to people I find interesting or companies that I have a vested interest in or thinking about purchasing from or even sometimes just for the fun of it.
I want to be able to read about what these people and businesses offer form time to time and happily ask them to do so.
I do however find that a lot of time is spent deleting emails rather than reading them. I’m concentrating on email here because it is something we do a lot of for our clients.
Being very busy I regularly just purge the lot as the time I want to read I spend time deleting unsolicited SPAM.
I am very hopeful I get lots of time back from those SPAM vampires when the GDPR comes into effect.
Will it work? I doubt it, but I’m very hopeful!
Anyways, what marketing can you do and what should you be doing better?
Email Marketing! But much better, and the way it should really have been done before GDPR.
Yes, email is still one of the best tools to move a prospect from a newcomer to your brand, into a full on evangelist for your business.
When I say better, I mean by using either a checkbox on your forms or by using double opt-in. It’s easy, so why aren’t you doing it? If you are then what you worrying about.
You will, in fact, definitely won’t gain as many people into your marketing database but do you really want people in your database that aren’t really looking for information from you or your business? I would argue it’s wasted energy, and money if you’re using a tool based on number of contacts such as Active Campaign (p.s we’re a reseller!).
How do you get people into your marketing database?
Inbound marketing or content marketing, call it what you want. It works! Look at Hubspot, the worlds best inbound marketing company in my humble opinion. They appear in pretty much anything you search for around their niche.
You can too!
Anyone who spends any time online will know the scenario, you are searching for a solution to your problem and suddenly you find yourself reading an article on “how to attract the right customer” finding it really engaging and a nice slide in box or in content box pops up asking if you would like more information?
Yes, you would as the content you are so engrossed in means that there must be more you don’t have time to read now but want to. So you fill in your email address.
Within a few weeks, or months you’re proposing the solution or service of said company to the boss or your line manager. You’ve become an evangelist for the brand who you didn’t even know about a few weeks or months before.
This is inbound marketing at its best. And it’s much easier than you think to do.
Need help with inbound marketing, give us a shout we don’t mind saying we’re pretty good at it!
So what does Inbound marketing consist of?
Just to set expectations, we’re not looking to produce an exhaustive list here. We’re simply looking to help with a few ideas which might be common place in certain industry sectors.
Here are a few types of inbound marketing we’d suggest starting right away:
Subject leading articles – Most people don’t know as much as you do about your industry, service or product. Write about it, not from a sales point of view but from the view of the user. What will they gain and why is the service or product a good thing for them in general?
Ultimate guides – You might think that telling someone how to do the actual service you offer is counterintuitive. But it really isn’t. There are lots of people who just want to know you can complete the job they would like you to do. Plus, an ultimate guide should give you an enormous amount of exposure. Hopefully leading to subscribers and those all important links from other websites.
Case Studies – Producing engaging case studies are great for lead generation. People will actively look for these on your site and in any marketing literature they have before they make a decision. They can also be great for SEO and can often be found by people searching for your service. Perfect opportunity to bring in new prospects.
Videos – If you aren’t using video as part of your marketing strategy at the minute you should be! The growth of video is massive and just keeps on growing. The world’s second biggest search engine is Youtube, and they now show as tiles within relevant searches on Google! Get on it if you haven’t already!
Like I said above, I’m not going to go on about too many types of content for your inbound marketing. Just try a few at first!
Make sure you have a way of converting those site visitors into subscribers or prospects! A great tool for this, if you’re using WordPress is Thrive Leads. If you’ve read this far you will, no doubt, have seen a perfectly designed opt-in section or slide in. It’s perfect and integrates via API into Active Campaign to help build a seamless inbound marketing platform.
Anyways, that’s where we’ll end this one. Hope you enjoyed reading it.