 Today I wanna talk to you about how you're filling your marketing funnels. Welcome to the We Are Slam show where you'll learn marketing agency insights, best practices and ideas to help your business grow. My name is Tyler Kelly. I'm the co-founder and chief strategist right here at Slam Agency. We have offices in St. Louis and Miami, clients all over the world. And this show really is for the marketing professionals, marketing leaders. It's for small business owners, people that really day in and day out are looking for ways to not only grow their business, but to do so by generating sales, generating leads. And today I wanna talk to you about how you're filling your marketing funnels. Now we have two options when it comes to generating leads. The first and the traditional, the way that's been around for a while, it's called outbound marketing. Now I'll explain that in a second, but the second is inbound marketing. And today what I really wanna do is give you an idea for what is outbound marketing and where might it apply in your business and then what is inbound marketing and how can you utilize that to generate leads? And do these two, can they play together? Do you have to pick one over the other? And where should you be investing your money and your time when it comes to marketing? Where are you gonna have the biggest impact? Let's talk about that. Now your knowledge of and experience with inbound and outbound marketing is really gonna depend on how long you've been in the professional world, in the corporate world, how long you've been in business for yourself, how long you've been in marketing, how long you've actually been doing marketing. Outbound is something that has been around for a long time. In many circles they call outbound the interruption-based marketing. They call it the traditional marketing. Really it's the television, the radio, the billboards, the trade shows. It's any time that you're going to create a marketing communication, an advertising piece, and you're gonna put that out into the world with the expectation that that piece of advertising, that that piece of communication will instantly stop somebody in their tracks because, number one, they recognize it. And then number two, that they'll take, not only take notice, but that they'll respond in a certain way. This is outbound marketing. You're going out into the marketplace and you're trying to pull people in. And then on the other hand, you have inbound marketing. And inbound really is, it's been positioned as the complete opposite of outbound marketing. And what I mean by that is instead of going out into the marketplace and trying to pull people into, to your product or service, what inbound marketing does is it allows you to exist out there, online, generally online, with content that people may come across and when they do, if that content is relevant for them in their time of search, in their time of need, then they're gonna click, they're gonna go to your site, they're gonna visit your site, and they're gonna become a lead. They're gonna identify themselves as somebody who needs your product or service. They not only want it, but they're able to buy it. So qualified lead. Now that's inbound marketing and we're gonna talk a little bit about how to do that as well. And inbound marketing, as you know, has been the talk of marketing circles for probably the last 10, almost 10 years. I mean, if you think about it, HubSpot really came into, came into existence probably about 2012-ish, right? And during that time, they really kind of identified and associated their brand with this idea of inbound marketing. Now, if you have been in marketing longer than eight or 10 years, then what I'm about to say, you're already gonna know this, but inbound marketing really, I mean, the phrase inbound marketing really is a combination of a lot of really good online digital marketing techniques that had been happening, you know, ever since Google came about. And so typically when you hear inbound marketing now, you're gonna probably think about HubSpot or especially if you go and you Google the phrase inbound marketing, you're gonna come across a lot of HubSpot content. But here's the thing. Everything that inbound marketing is, has been around much longer than HubSpot. And this includes creating relevant content, SEO optimizing your content, creating calls to actions and email follow-up, or as we used to call it back in the day, auto responder campaigns. I mean, these things have been going on for a while, right? But HubSpot really, they came along and they associated their brand in a very powerful way with this new terminology that kind of encapsulated all of these really good best practices, online best practices, online advertising best practices. And as a result, they pretty much own that phrase. Now outbound marketing, you know, when I think about outbound marketing, for the most part, because we're a digital agency, for the most part, because we understand the power and the impact and the potential in digital advertising, for the most part, we're going to advise against outbound marketing. You know, I was at a conference a couple years ago, a Midwest Digital Marketing Conference, and I was speaking and I was talking about the just the flat out numbers that if you want to reach college age students, then the way to do that is through YouTube, because at the time YouTube as a channel was getting more college age viewers than all of cable television combined. And so I said, if you want to reach college age viewers, then why in the world are you advertising on television? Why in the world are you advertising on cable? And when I said that, you know, there were a lot of really grumpy looking faces in the room. And actually after, you know, I got off the stage there, I was approached by a cable representative and this person said, I can't believe you told this room of 500 people not to advertise on cable television. I mean, don't you know who we are? And you know, the thing is, it's like that's the writing on the wall. And so the point is digital is not only where it's at, but it's where it's going. And we've already seen and we're going to continue to see this gradual dying out or reinventing of what was the outbound traditional world. And when we say traditional, we really mean television, radio, out of home, print, conference trade shows, these types of things which just really, you know, how much longer, how much longer are they going to last? You know, another aspect of outbound that you should be aware of is outbound sales and this idea of telemarketing. I mean, once the last time you answered your phone and said with a smile on your face, sell me whatever it is you're trying to sell me, I am looking, I've been looking forward to your call. I mean, the point is most people, number one, they don't answer the call because we all have caller ID and we have a contact list of people that we will answer the phone for, but if we don't recognize those numbers, then we're not going to answer the phone. And then, you know, on top of that, if you do get through, if somehow like I accidentally answered the phone and wasn't expecting it to be you, then what's going to happen? I mean, the tolerance level, you know, there's a very small tolerance and you know, I'm a polite person and I'm interested in sales, so I might stop and listen. I might, you know, try to encourage you if you're that telemarketer, but for the most part, your success rate is less than 1%, I mean, it is dismal and we know that telemarketing has been dying a slow death for many, many, many years. So what's the solution? The solution is inbound. The solution is to develop content marketing content for your website and develop it in a way that, number one, it's relevant to your customers and your potential customers and then optimizing it in a way that it, it appears for their searches, when they go online to start searching for content, your content is there and then it's, you know, it's not just there because you've SEO optimized it, but it's there because it's relevant and so when they click on that content, they're gonna stop, they're gonna spend time on your page, they're gonna spend time on your site, they're gonna click through, they're gonna follow through, they're gonna click on a call to action, which is the, you know, whatever action it is that you want them to complete once they're on your site and they're gonna generally become, you know, a lead, a qualified lead, somebody that you can enter into your drip marketing system and somebody that potentially, at some point, could do business with you, that's inbound marketing. So when I say this, you know, a lot of times people say, well, so you're telling me that, you know, I shouldn't advertise on television at all and that's not what I'm saying. Television, radio, print, out of home, these types of channels, these types of mediums, they allow you to do things that digital doesn't. So outbound marketing has its purpose and let me tell you what that purpose is, in my opinion, that purpose is to drive brand awareness, okay? Drive brand awareness. Now, when I talk about my four pillars of customer acquisition, I talk about the second pillar. The second pillar is market awareness and I always mention that this term market awareness is actually in the textbooks. If you studied marketing in college, in the textbook, it's referred to as brand awareness. This is this idea that your market, your customers understand who you are and what you do. And if your customers, your potential customers, understand who you are as a brand and what you do, then you have brand awareness within your marketplace. When the time comes, they'll be more likely than not to immediately look you up, to immediately go to your website, to immediately send you an email because you've already earned their trust, okay? And so this happens through a combination of outbound and inbound marketing. So the outbound aspect of this is brand awareness campaigns. It's television and radio and print, out of home. If you have the budget and you're able to do these things, if you don't, no worries, then it's strictly digital. But if you have the budget, then a good marketing mix is gonna include all of the above because when it comes to brand awareness, television, radio and out of home still apply. And so there definitely is a place for outbound and that place really is brand awareness. If you have the budget, go ahead and invest it in getting your product or service in front of the right people. The great thing about outbound that a lot of inbound people aren't talking about the great thing about outbound today is that you're able to target it in the same way that you're able to target digital. And what this means with OTT, connected TV over the top, these are digital radio, digital television. These are areas which I believe I would put into the outbound bucket. And a lot of inbound people will say, well, you know, that's not necessarily outbound because you're able to target it. But really it is an outbound because of the definition of outbound, being that you go out and you create a piece of content, you create an advertisement and marketing communication and it is meant to interrupt people. They're not actively searching for your product or service at this point. And so digital TV, OTT, CTV, all of that is outbound. And the beauty of those mediums is that you're able to target your audience in the same way that you're able to target your audience on a Facebook or on a Google AdWords. Now, when it comes to inbound, what should you be doing right now? Well, number one, you gotta think about inbound in a couple of different ways. The first is bottom of funnel. Now, traditionally when we've talked about inbound, we've talked about inbound in terms of a funnel. And the way that we talked about it is that leads would go in the top, top of the funnel, and they would work their way down and they'd pop out at the bottom as a sale, as a customer. Now, when we put this into practice as an industry, we quickly realized that not everyone acted in that manner, meaning that not all leads went into the top and came out the bottom. Some would come in at the bottom of the funnel, some at the top, some at the middle. And so we began to develop this terminology, top, middle, bottom of funnel. And so when we think of bottom of the funnel, when I say bottom of the funnel, what I want you to think about is, what are some of the techniques and practices that I can be doing to really build out this and generate leads at the bottom of the funnel, which would mean that they are likely to be buyers now. They are finishing their buyer's journey and they are looking to make a purchase of your product or service right now. So what types of activities can I be doing for that part of the funnel? And typically that is, it's Google Ads. It is pay per click advertising. It's advertising on the terms and the keywords that are more likely to identify those people at the bottom of the funnel. Now I always say, when it comes to the middle and the top of the funnel, that I don't want you to spend pay per click dollars. And the reason why I don't want you to spend pay per click dollars is because if you're accountable for your budget and you're spending your pay per click budget on the middle of the funnel or the top of the funnel, then what's gonna happen is it's gonna be very hard to show ROI. Top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, those are very relevant for you as a marketing professional because you know that by attracting leads in those areas and being able to nurture those leads over time throughout the buying cycle, then what you're gonna do is you're gonna have a much higher conversion rate when the time comes, when they're at the bottom of the funnel. But if your boss is like, listen, I'm gonna give you $10,000 to spend this month and I want to see what that ROI is on that $10,000 when I speak to you in 35 days, then you don't wanna spend any of that money on the top or the middle of the funnel, right? And so I always say that when it comes to inbound, I don't want you spending cash money on anything other than bottom of the funnel when it comes to pay per click. What do you do for the middle and the top? Well, quickly I'll tell you that you generate content. You know, in many places, inbound marketing, content marketing are interchangeable and they're interchangeable and they're used in similar ways because when you think of inbound marketing, I want you to think of content. I want you to think of developing content, whether it be a video or an audio or a blog post. Develop that content, get it out there, make sure it's relevant to the types of searches that your audience is, that your customers are searching and then make sure that it solves those problems. So when they land on your landing page through search or through a YouTube search when they land on your video, that your video, your audio, your blog, that it answers their questions right then and there. That's how you create thought leadership. That's how you become the authority in your field and that's how you generate and capture leads at the top and the middle of the funnel. All right, so this has been a nice quick overview, outbound versus inbound marketing. I don't think it's one or the other. If you have the ability, the capability, the budget to do both, then by all means do both. But if you have a limited budget, focus that budget over here on inbound and make sure that you do one of two things. If you have the budget, then generate bottom of the funnel leads with pay per click. And if you don't have a ton of money to spend and if you're looking to draw out and build that inbound marketing program, marketing program, then make sure that you start developing relevant content, content that your customers, your potential customers will value and that will answer their questions, thereby setting you up as the leader in your field. If you've enjoyed this show, do me a favor and let me know. If you're watching the video on YouTube or on Facebook or Instagram TV, do me a favor, hit me up in the comments and let me know. Any questions, let me know. If you're listening on a podcast network, be sure to subscribe, rate and review. We greatly appreciate that. And if you can share this episode with a friend because the more people that understand how to utilize app on inbound, the better off our industry, the marketing industry will be. Thank you for tuning in. I will see you next week. Thanks for watching. If you like what you saw, subscribe and hit that bell. It'll be the first to be notified when new content goes live. After that, you can watch more videos from Slam Agency. We've picked something we think you'll love.