Your marketing plays a major role in the success of your business, and that includes more than just the customers it brings to your door. The hidden value in marketing is how it affects the morale of your employees, too. It sets the tone for those crucial early interactions with customers, and guides the way that outsiders view your business. It also has a big effect on how your employees spend their workday, and how successful they are at converting customers.
Outbound marketing is the old way of doing things, relying on traditional advertising mediums like radio, television, and print. Old standbys like cold-calling and direct mail also fall into the outbound category. These methods are resource-intensive, imprecise, and depend on the numbers game to get results. Inbound marketing is quite different, and it’s vital to your online marketing in Calgary. It’s a better way of doing business in the eyes of your customers, and it’s good for employee morale, too.
Inbound Marketing: The Basics
Even if you’re not familiar with the details of inbound marketing, you likely encounter it often. Much of the marketing done in the digital world is of the inbound variety. The key difference between inbound and outbound marketing is that inbound guides interested, targeted customers to your business. You no longer have to cross your fingers and hope that your message reaches the right audience. With inbound, accuracy is part of the package.
- Inbound marketing leverages tools like SEO, social media, content marketing, and your website to make sure your message lands in front of the people you want to see it. By marketing in this way, you allow customers to find you on their own terms, which means you get more qualified leads.
- Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. When you have a question about something, where do you look for answers? If you’re like most people, you turn to an online search. The listings on the first page of search results don’t land there by accident. Inbound marketing is what allows those businesses to inhabit that prime real estate.
- Inbound marketing is also less demanding of time. Cold-calling, even when it goes well, can easily chew up whole days of work. Free your salespeople to do what they do best by replacing dated outbound strategies with effective inbound marketing.
Boosting Morale With Inbound and More
Even the most successful salespeople, managers, and other employees will occasionally find themselves in a slump. The causes of a slump are often quite vague, which only compounds the frustration for the slumping employee. Fortunately, the solutions aren’t so vague, and slumping employees have many options for turning things around.
- Asking for help is a great place to start. Sure, it’s a simple concept, but the competitive nature of most careers can make it tough to seek assistance. Encourage slumping employees to speak with a team member who’s having success, a manager with a friendly ear, or even a satisfied customer. It’s amazing how one conversation can change an employee’s perspective for the better.
- If an employee is the type who can avoid overdoing it, analysis can yield positive results. Have the employee track what the do throughout the day, and the results those actions generate. This tactic works best when the employee records information during the good times as well, so they have a point of comparison.
- Cold-calling and other outbound tactics can seriously damage morale. The very best cold-callers still fail the vast majority of the time, and that level of rejection is jarring even to the most confident employees. Inbound marketing means the end of those high-failure tactics, which provides a major morale boost.
There are many ways to boost employee morale, depending on your office environment, your industry, and the vision of your company. Ultimately, though, the best way to improve employee morale is to position your employees for success. That means offering the resources they need to succeed, from training to marketing. The best part? Inbound marketing is as beneficial to your company’s bottom line as it is to the morale of your employees.
Ready to learn more about what inbound marketing can do for your business? Emphasize Design has the solutions you need to maximize the value of your online marketing in Calgary and beyond. Start the process today by considering which marketing solution is the right fit for your company’s unique needs and goals.