5 Big Advantages of Making Your Website Inbound

*This blog post has been refreshed for 2018
Turning your website into an online sales platform for your business can be very challenging. But with inbound and marketing automation software, like HubSpot, as the backbone for your website, it becomes an integral part of your marketing. When an inbound structure is in place, you are able to make your business’s online presence known.

How it works

• The inbound strategy and marketing funnel are integrated directly into the website.
• You’ll need a dedicated web team, from either an agency or in-house, to keep track of performance and implement changes when needed.

However, what are the actual advantages of making your website inbound? Let’s explore…

1. Drive conversions with a 24/7 marketing funnel

You shouldn’t be thinking about your marketing strategy as a separate function from your website. Instead, see your website as the central hub for your marketing and sales strategy. It’s a marketing funnel where all the different elements attract, convert, close and delight customers.

The focus of your website shouldn’t only be on aesthetics, but also functionality. Your website should always follow the phases of the inbound methodology, with each page corresponding to a specific point of the buyer’s journey.

2. Generate leads by attracting customers early in the buying cycle

Buyers are always researching and deciding on solutions before any sales can take place. Successful companies are present in the first half of the journey and consistently educate potential customers.

An inbound website nurtures leads gradually from their first interaction until their final purchase. There are three stages a buyer will take before purchasing anything: awareness, consideration and decision.

Your website’s content needs to address all the buyer stages by offering information related to the buyer’s problem at any of these stages.

3. See continuous improvement in design and performance

As you do more consistent re-designs to your website, you’ll start seeing an increase in leads and sales. You will need to determine goals for your business and define your valuable metrics.

Following this, you analyse your website’s performance data by monitoring which content is converting, where clicks are occurring, which landing pages are being visited and what the overall purchasing path of a customer is.

Reactively, you make frequent improvements to the website based on what the data tells you. The result is your website’s continuous improvement with quality lead generation.

4. Improve ROI incrementally

Remember that functionality trumps website appearance when it comes to lead generation and conversion opportunities. When you design with appearance in mind, you have no strategy for ROI in place, you can go over budget and possibly see that your website isn’t returning on your initial investment.

With an inbound website, you’re constantly improving your website to meet the needs of your potential leads in order to convert them, and make them repeat customers. You can improve your website’s ROI with consistent little changes and can prove that minor adjustments are having a direct (and positive) effect on ROI.

5. Qualify contacts with intelligent content and an integrated lifecycle strategy

It’s really simple that the more you educate prospects, the better quality your leads will be. With intelligently-designed content, you’ll be able to generate leads that are more trustworthy of your solutions and who are willing to invest in your business.

The above process is essentially lead nurturing in action. With an inbound website, your lead nurturing process is completely automatic and qualifying prospects as leads is far easier.