If you’re a professional that runs a holistic business, you probably live and breathe what you do. Your passion lies in helping people, not marketing. In fact, many holistic practitioners feel downright frustrated when it comes to promoting themselves. Whether you’re marketing marijuana products or marketing yoga studios, you might find it hard to strike a balance between connecting with potential clients who are in dire need of care and advocating for yourself without sounding like a slick salesperson. That’s where inbound marketing comes in.
Instead of bombarding your audience with persuasive verbiage, give them something that’s valuable to them. Everyone searches the internet for information that offers a solution to some kind of problem. To receive the content, customers need to give you their email address. You have a lead, and they have something that they want. If your website has stellar search engine optimization, you’ll pull in prospects just by offering relevant information. Your target customer performs a search and finds indispensable information on your website. Capturing leads also lets you prove that your inbound marketing strategy works and allows you to deepen your connection with your audience. If you can nurture those relationships properly, you create a bond on which you can eventually capitalize.
People don’t like feeling like others are manipulating them. With inbound marketing, the power is in your audience’s hands. They’re electing to get one of the valuable resources that you offer. Your customers get to make informed decisions instead of being sold something in a way that feels manipulative. This goes along with the mission of many holistic providers. If you aim to empower people to better themselves, shouldn’t your marketing do the same thing?
When your clients have questions about your business, it’s your responsibility to answer them. You can create an effective inbound marketing strategy by listening to the questions that your customers have and answering them honestly. Don’t hide your process or methodology. Give this information freely, and watch your business grow as you secure new customers. Once you have nurtured your leads and brought them deeper into your sales funnel, you can continue to be transparent about your intentions. After you publish a substantial amount of content on your blog, social media and email drips, your leads will know if you’re a good fit for them or not. Most of the time, people are just looking for someone that they can trust. Your audience probably just wants you to be straight with them. You don’t have to resort to sly sales techniques to secure customers.
Many holistic practitioners work in a field that supports a more natural way of doing things. If you’re pumping out masses of paper marketing materials, you’re not exactly practicing what you preach. Because inbound marketing is digital, it is environmentally friendly and fits with your philosophies.
Although outbound marketing strategies can be expensive up front and may not deliver a high ROI, inbound marketing can be extremely profitable. Inbound leads are generally 61% less expensive than outbound leads. Conversions from inbound marketing are also higher than those from outbound marketing. Remember, your leads asked for the information in the first place. They have more reason to convert than people that you cold call, for example. When you use inbound marketing, you bring in a targeted audience, which translates to higher quality leads, more conversions and a better ROI. With outbound marketing, you're paying to cast a wide net, but you might not drag in the people who actually want to compensate you for the products or services that you offer. Your business is all about self-improvement. Your marketing should be too.