Why your next website
should be inbound

Inbound Marketing is an approach based on the principle that your prospective clients no longer want unsolicited communications in the form of advertising, email spam, cold calls or direct mail. They prefer to research information online relating to issues that they care about and inform themselves of the consequences and solutions at the speed and in the format of their choosing.

Marketers therefore need to be able to analyse the online behaviour of prospective clients and adapt the information they provide them based on their area and level of interest.

Inbound Marketing provides a methodology and tools to do such analysis and to personalize the content that is provided online in a similar way to the online bookstore Amazon with its ever-popular: “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”.

This kind of personalization is based on the capability to respond appropriately to visitor and prospect behaviour online and, in the case of the website, to provide a version of the site tailored to the individual, which in turn will significantly raise the conversion rates from visitors to prospects to opportunity.

Many websites remain organisational-centric and offer little in the way of value to the user. As more than 80% of users start their search for products and services online searching for valuable content, these sites will increasingly become irrelevant. Typically ‘brochure’ sites that describe the company and the products and services offered are used as online directories and have neither the content or user journey to drive audience engagement and conversion.

Persona – lise
The next step in this process is to transform the website into one which can build and engage a community of prospects and stakeholders around its personalised content. This will become not just a site but a scalable and adaptive marketing capability built on a deep understanding of clients’ issues and markets (personas). This capability is not just limited to multi-national marketers with millions in their budgets. New and accessible capabilities are available to the more modest marketers who can now affordably integrate an Inbound Marketing approach with technologies such as Web Content Management, Email Marketing, Mobile, Social Media, Marketing Automation, Campaign Management and Analytics to incorporate personalisation.

This kind of new website will become the hub for converting increased, well qualified traffic into prospects. It can be optimised to ensure that visitors can easily follow calls-to-action and all relevant information about visitors is captured and analysed automatically.

The structure will immediately help visitors identify themselves across the full range of products and services and will be focused on the visitor and not the company.

The visitor is provided with a unique version of the site based on a variety of data gathered about them that enables you to serve up the right content for their needs thus driving higher conversion rates.

Five Building Blocks of a great Inbound Website
1. Personas
2. User journeys
3. Messaging and Branding
4. Content
5. Inbound Marketing: SEO, Social, Conversion, Analytics

Conclusion
Initiatives such as the launch of Ektron’s Digital Experience Hub and their partnership with HubSpot have propelled them into the top of Gartner’s magic quadrant for web content management.

In explanation Gartner recognised that websites now needed to offer a personalized experience based on an ability to recognize devices and previous interactions of users and to provide them with a content experience based on a ‘segment of one’.

Doing this in the context of an inbound marketing methodology will enable marketers to create truly great website experiences and drive website users to higher levels of conversion than ever before ultimately producing more leads and sales.

Building an Inbound Website in short allows marketers to connect their content to revenue.

You can connect in person with Brightfire at Inbound UK 2012 and Funnel. Find out more at www.brightfire.co.uk/createaninboundwebsite

John Hornell
CEO
Brightfire

Brightfire
Tel: 0845 0347330
Email: enquiries@brightfire.co.uk
Web: www.brightfire.co.uk
Twitter: @brightfireview