Episode 50 – This Marketing Strategy Eliminates the Need for Selling

Introduction    00:00:03    Marketing, explosive growth, and revolutionary secrets that can catapult your business to new heights. You’re now listening to The Underground Marketer Podcast with your host Tudor Dumitrescu, the one podcast devoted to showing new businesses how to market themselves for high growth.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:00:25    Welcome to the underground marketer. This is the place where we deliver the real truth about marketing and explore big ideas that can help new businesses thrive and grow into big ones. I’m your host Tudor. And today I would like to discuss with you inbound marketing and specifically what inbound marketing is, when you should be using it, and how you can actually approach it. So the first thing that I want to say here is to give a short definition of inbound marketing and position it as something different than outbound. So inbound is basically when you get the client through something that you put in front of them to reach out to you and basically say, I’m interested. Whereas outbound is when you reach out to the client and present them with what you have and check if they’re actually interested. Right? So, whereas inbound, you can think about it as dangling a carrot in front of them and having them come and bite it, outbound is more like pushing something on to them and seeing if they are accepted.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:01:34    Right? So outbound is stuff like cold calling, cold email, that kind of stuff. Whereas inbound would be stuff like posting on social media, creating content, writing, white papers, publishing staff appearing as a guest on shows, podcasts, all that would basically be inbound marketing, anything that also involves lead generation to where, for example, you’re giving away something in exchange for people’s email and then maybe selling to them that also sort of qualifies as inbound. So, um, the big difference here is that inbound can save you a lot of time in the long run, right? So if you have people coming to you by themselves and you have an infrastructure, which basically brings people to you and already prepares them to work with you, it’s going to be a lot more effective. One of the things that we need to note is that inbound basically makes it a lot easier for prospects to convert.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:02:36    Typically, people who do inbound already have a solid reputation and people see that reputation online through posts and whatnot, they already determined that it’s something that they need, and they reach out to the person when they’re basically ready to buy. So selling to those customers is also much easier than selling to a cold outbound audience. The downside of course, is that in order to develop the infrastructure that you need for inbound to really take off, it takes a lot of time. So whether that’s SEO and you’re trying to rank your websites or that it ranks high for people who are interested in what you’re doing, or you’re just publishing content on social media and creating content. The downside is that it takes a lot of time of doing that and doing it consistently for inbound to start to go into effect. Whereas outbound, you can just start cold calling, pick up the phone call person after person, after person, and it’s already working right.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:03:38    There is no time delay that you have to invest into it to make sure that it actually works. It works so to speak straight from the get-go. That’s why inbound is always my recommendation for businesses who already have a solid outbound foundation. They’re already making great revenue and a great income, and they can actually have the luxury, so to speak, to invest in outbound and put a lot of effort into it so that they build a system that doesn’t require that they spend so much time trying to generate interest and awareness about their product, right? So they basically build a system that generates the interest and the awareness about their product for them. And they don’t have to do it. Now, there are some workarounds when it comes to outbound to doing something similar so that you don’t have to invest your time. And that’s actually why I released my a and they made available my a perpetual motion, B2B lead generation system, which is similar to inbound in the sense that you don’t have to lift a finger to get your calendar fully booked.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:04:47    So there are some exceptions like that. If you’re interested in the perpetual motion, B2B lead generation system, you know, there will be a link in the show notes. So feel free to check that out and see if it’s a good fit for you. But the basic idea here, and this is the basic idea, which is true generally when it comes to inbound and outbound is that outbound is going to take a lot more effort to actually get those sales and to close them. Whereas inbound people already come prepared to you. They know what you’re doing and what you have to offer, and they’re pretty much ready to buy. So all you’re doing in the actual sales call with inbound prospects is you don’t even need much of a script or anything because it’s just onboarding them. You know, they pretty much already want to buy.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:05:29    That’s why they’re reaching out and they want to hop on a call with you without you even inviting them or asking them about it. That’s the big difference. And as I said, inbound, I generally recommended bigger businesses. If you’re a new business, you should start with outbound. The B2B perpetual motion lead generation system they spoke about is a great way to get your calendar fully booked without relying on you, without paying for ads and without spending your time basically. So, um, that’s what makes it great. So if you’re interested, check that out anyway, back to inbound marketing, when it comes to inbound and doing it effectively, what you’re trying to do is position yourself as an authority and show people that you are somebody to be trusted when it comes to a whole series of problems that they may have, or areas of interest in me half.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:06:21    So let’s say that you are trying to become an authority through inbound in the SEO market, specifically in the SEO market for local businesses. So if that’s what you’re trying to do, then obviously you have to create content. You know, content is the heart of inbound marketing. You’re not selling to people, you’re educating people and you’re showing people that you are an authority and you know what you’re talking about and you can basically deliver for them and you can help them out. So you’re triggering reciprocity by providing value to people, without trying to sell them all the time. A great book actually, which really covers the essence. So to speak of inbound marketing is a Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary V. It’s one of the books that I recommend when it comes to inbound marketing, because you really understand the mindset behind that, the mindset of jab, jab jab.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:07:15    So provide value, provide value, provide value, and only then every now and then try to sell. So separate. The core of inbound marketing is basically that you separate the two goals. Every content that you put out there isn’t meant to get a sale. That’s what the outbound marketer does. That’s completely different for the outbound marketer. Every communication that he puts out there is aimed to get a sale or move closer to a sale in inbound marketing. That’s not necessarily true. For example, you may post some jokes on your LinkedIn or on your Facebook, right? That’s somewhat relevant to what you’re selling, but not completely. Maybe it’s a play on words, maybe something entertaining. Maybe you comment on a world event that you can somehow tie with what you’re doing. Maybe you comment for example, about the decrease in small businesses and how most businesses, small businesses are struggling nowadays.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:08:14    And obviously you can make a comment that part of that is due to ineffective marketing and you tie with what you’re doing for SEO, right? So, um, that sort of thing. So you separate the two goals. So some pieces of content have the goal to sell. And when your goal is to sell, you’re going to sell the down thing as well as you can, right? So you’re not going to shy away from selling what you have. You’re going to be straight up today. I’m selling this here’s how much it would cost. Here’s how to get it, reach out to me or whatever that would be. The sales posts, the right hooks as Gary V called them. And then prior to that, it’s the jobbing. It’s creating content, that’s entertaining and that’s providing value to people without actually trying to sell them anything. So in those posts, you don’t try to pitch in, you know, in a hidden way, your services, you don’t do any of that.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:09:09    This is actually about, as I said, separating the two goals and making sure that you’re consistent in pursuing them at the right point. And the right points means that you job at least 3, 4, 5 times before you try to sell something. So a lot of it in terms of inbound marketing has to do with creating the content, right? So you will be creating this content. You could be creating the series of content that you use. Now, the key to effective inbound marketing is that you have to tie into trends that people are interested in. Right? So let’s suppose that you’re selling a course about jumping rope, right? Then you can create, for example, a video about, let’s see something like how to have a body as sexy as Christiano Ronaldo’s right. And that will be the content piece, right? What people care about. People don’t care about your jumping rope course, right?  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:10:12    They cared about looking like Christiana Ronaldo. So, um, that piece would basically tell them how Cristiano Ronaldo has developed his physique and whatnot. And as part of that, maybe at the end, you can add, it’s more pitch for your jumping rope course and tie it in with the video. So, you could post that for example, on Facebook, share it on social media and whatnot. So this content jacking, and basically tying yourselves to larger trends that are happening in the world is how you do effective inbound marketing and how you reach more people. And you reach more people because you create content that they care about. And that’s the key, that’s what makes inbound marketing work. And as I said, it takes time, right? So it’s not going to be instant. It’s going to take time for you to develop all of this and to actually make it work.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:11:04    But this trend-jacking, and basically identifying things that resonate with people and finding a way to tie it in with what you’re doing and what you’re standing for. That’s the key. Obviously what you don’t want to do is let’s say that you have a business that’s selling, for example, ice cream, probably to be farfetched, to try and tie in with some Austinites who just landed on Mars, for example, or some piece of news like that. But you could tie in with a piece of news, like for example, temperatures are at the highest ever in whatever city, uh, blah, blah, blah. And you could find a way to tie ice cream with that because obviously a benefit of ice cream is cooling yourself down and making you feel more comfortable when it’s very hot outside. So this trend-jacking is at the heart of inbound marketing, and you have to generally separate the posts that sell and the posts that deliver bad value and aim to build an audience.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:12:10    And this is because basically inbound marketing works on developing the top end of your funnel. So it makes more people aware of your existence and of what you’re doing and tries to get some of them interested, more interested in you. But again, it’s a process that happens over time. So probably somebody likes your content one time, two times, three times, four times. And by the time you get to the seventh or eighth or ninth, like maybe then they actually start thinking more seriously about working out with, or working with you and, or hiring you or buying a service from you. You know, it takes time. So it’s not going to be instant. And you’re basically working to really build an audience and build a brand around what you do and what you stand for. And that’s very important within bounds. Again, all those branding considerations, they’re not as important with outbound because outbound is basically trying to find the people who need what you’re selling and selling it to them.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:13:10    Whereas inbound is trying to generate demand for what you’re selling and get more people interested to get more people, knowing you position yourself as an authority and basically simplify sales and make the entire sales process easier. So, uh, when it actually comes to converting people who reach out by themselves to you, it’s all much, much simpler, right? They’re already ready to buy. As we covered before, the other aspect of inbound is creating content that allows you to build an email list or gather people’s contact information. So stuff like lead magnets, white papers, presentations, valuable content like that, which is unique, and that people are going to want special access to. That’s great. That’s a great way to build your audience, but basically the strategy is build an audience, keep them entertained and interested, talk about content that they actually care about, even if it’s not a hundred percent related to what you’re selling.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:14:14    But as we said, there still must be some sort of link there. And of course, every now and then you’re going to right hook them and try to sell them what you actually have. Unlike outbound relies on actually building an audience and building a relationship with people over time. And it really makes use of the idea of persuasion through repetition, right? So somebody is not going to be interested to buy SEO from you the first time he cares. He hears about SEO from you, right? But if he hears 10, 20, 30 times and your position as an authority, he’s obviously going to become more and more and more interested to actually buy from you over time. And that’s what you’re actually going to use to actually close more sales and get more deals. So as a short overview, basically with inbound, they generally recommended to more established companies who are already getting the sales that they need.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:15:14    And they’re looking to invest less time in actually generating those sales. And they want people to reach out to them, you know, instead of having to reach out to people themselves to get those sales that’s who inbound is generally for inbound takes time. That’s the disadvantage. But of course it does save time in the long run because you don’t have to put so much effort in finding new people and selling them that all becomes sort of automatic, great inbound marketing eliminates the need for you to sell anything. You’re not really selling anymore. Right? You’re just putting it out there and people want it by themselves. You’re not trying to sell them or force them or push them into buying anything unlike without bond, where very often you do push them into buying what you’re selling or wanting what you’re selling at the very least. So, um, we also discussed the importance of trend-jacking and tying yourself into larger trends that people are talking about and that people are interested in that are still related to what you’re selling.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:16:12    And we also discussed the importance of creating content and making sure that you separate the content that sells from the content that tender contains and provides value to people. The combination nowadays is infotainment as people call it, right? So both information and entertainment together, that’s what’s really popular when it comes to inbound over the long run. As I said, this pretty much eliminates the need for you to sell. So that’s why it’s incredibly valuable. It’s one of the reasons why I always recommend that established businesses look into developing an inbound channel. So that’s pretty much what I wanted to discuss for today’s episode. So stay tuned for the next episode. And until next time, remember, keep growing your business and providing massive value to the world. You are the reason why we’re all growing richer. Our freedoms are expanding and we’re all living in greater prosperity. Thank you.