Remington BeggTraditional marketing students learn the 4 P’s of Marketing in school: Product, Place, Price, and Promotion. But those who adhere to the inbound methodology of marketing can immediately notice some big problem there. Where’s the customer focus? Just like most of traditional, outbound marketing, those 4 P’s only focus on the brand and what they’re trying to push on people. That’s why inbound marketing focuses on a different set of 4 P’s:
#1 Persona
Your Buyer Persona is who is looking for your company’s services, whether they know it or not. By definition, a buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your company’s ideal customer based on market research and real data collected from your existing customers. They are absolutely vital to the success of any inbound marketing campaign. You can’t create any content or design your website without first knowing who will be looking at it.
#2 Product
Whether you're focused on traditional or inbound marketing, your actual product is still important. Your product is how you attract customers, keep them happy, and make your company a profit to stay in business. So while your customers are always a big focus in inbound marketing, you can’t forget the actual product you’re selling. The best blogs in the world won’t keep people coming back to a less-than-stellar product.
#3 Place in the Purchase Cycle
Connecting with people is the easiest when you’re meeting them at their stage in the buying cycle. To do this, allow multiple entry point to get to your cycle, like top-of-the-funnel blog posts and landing pages geared toward those who are ready for a free trial.
#4 Purchase Path to Conversion
Consumers research, shop, and purchase when and where they want, and they do it on their own schedules. Every unique customer takes a unique path to conversion. Mapping these paths helps in connecting to customers at multiple points in the buying cycle. Too often, encouragement to make a purchase only comes at the end of the journey. In reality, a majority of your visitors aren’t ready to buy yet because they’re only researching or shopping. Understanding the purchase path will go a long way towards optimizing it for the best ROI possible.
Instead of a list, these 4 P’s are really more of a cycle. You’re never really finished with inbound marketing; you use both your failure and your success to make the next campaign even better, and keep moving forward to even more website visitors and an even higher ROI.
To learn more about how to start of your strategy the correct way and create buyer personas, you can download our free Inbound Marketing eBook 8 Questions to Ask When Developing Buyer Personas. These all-important Buyer Personas aren't difficult to create, you just need to ask the right questions to the right people and present that information in a helpful way so the people in your business can get to know your persona or personas. Find out exactly how to do that today!
