How to Make Your Brand a Helpful Hero With Inbound Marketing

Is your brand helpful?

Hopefully we’re all passionate about the brands we represent - meaning we’re at least a little biased or too eager to say:

“Yes, our brand, our content is helpful”...

Well, the truth is, helpful isn’t enough anyway. Content needs to be gripping.

And it can be challenging putting ourselves in the shoes of an outsider who’s less interested in what you do all day than you are - so you might want to get an objective opinion to support your thoughts on the opening question.

Or maybe your brand just isn’t putting much content out at all?

Rather a clean slate than a tainted one I guess…

No matter what your brand’s current face to market looks like - we all have a desire to increase returns on our marketing investment and Inbound Marketing will be the way to go.

A quick definition of Inbound Marketing

In 29 words: Inbound Marketing is about being found by your prospects through helpful content and putting intelligent systems in place to vastly increase the amount of new business you get through it.

Consider your points of Contact, Messages and Tone, and improve.

Firstly, your website can’t be considered your brand’s first port-of-call these days, so how did they get there?

If it was from social media or intelligent email automation - you’re on the right track here.

But if you’re thinking: “Ya, but I’ve found that a few likes on Facebook, mostly from our own employees, doesn’t mean jack.”

- you’re right.

This reminds me of the whole, “we need an app to be relevant!” craze we’re probably coming out of now (thankfully).

I digress

The point is - if you’re going to do it, do it right. Do it for the sake of your return from marketing investment.

In other words, your ability to harness social media is only as powerful as your strategy & underlying support structure, which should result in your prospects willingly giving their contact information to you.

And you’re going to have to offer some truly helpful content to get your prospects comfortable enough to give you access to their already overloaded inbox…

Content Strategy Meets Marketing Automation

In order to make your brand a helpful hero, you’ll need to have been creative & helpful enough to stand out and resonate while also having the digital infrastructure & automation in place to capture, track and nurture leads to fruition. This is the philosophy of Inbound Marketing.

Side note: you should know that sometimes just typing the word ‘automation’ makes me cringe a little because of the stigma attached – the robotic, cold, ‘spam foldery’ one…

Our truth is: we’ve found that once a business fully realises how sophisticated leading CRM’s are nowadays, there’s just no turning back.

That brings us to HubSpot...

All that stuff about clever automation features and a clear digital interface centred on real insights?

HubSpot, an Inbound Marketing oriented interface has got it all baked in.

Co-founder, Brian Halligan, coined the phrase Inbound Marketing and with Dharmesh Shah - pioneered HubSpot - a platform to help brands thrive through it.

So yes, the platforms are there and undoubtedly: there are creative strategies bound to work for your brand.

But Inbound marketing is not an easy philosophy to follow with only in-house employees & assets. And using Inbound Marketing with an innovative, behemoth of a brand like HubSpot doesn’t come cheap.

Thankfully, we’re in the business age of collaboration and what is overwhelming for one, is an exciting challenge for another.

“HubSpot is a lot more than a subscription for us – it’s ours & our client’s marketing keystone”

- MO Agency

In Summary:

1)    How helpful is your brand?

2)    And is the content around it driving new business?

We’d love to know more about your brand’s ambitions

If you'd like to learn more about Inbound Marketing, we highly recommend our Beginners Guide To Inbound Marketing, complete with practical examples to help you know how it applies to your brand...