Inbound Marketing

As society changes over time, so do our buying behavior change, and thus marketing approaches, it’s a moving target and those that are in the industry of attracting new customers and keeping those they have always needed updating and improving. First, a brief overview of the very nature of inbound marketing today. Considered to be a method that is less intrusive, making the product or service and content attractive to the point where it attracts visitors organically to your website.

(Fig 1) Flywheel innovated by Hubspot

Hubspot outlines a new strategy used in today's method called ‘Attract, Engage and Delight’. This concept means your whole strategy is customer-centered. Making sure you have valuable concise content, easy to navigate, they have devised something called a ‘Flywheel’, they talk about attracting the right people with relevant content, the attract method devises a construct to communicate with clients in order to build a trustworthy relationship. Engage means presenting solutions and insights to the client's or customers' goals. Delight comes in play with supporting the customer with their purchase and leading to ongoing relationships. For inbound marketing creating and publishing valuable content for your potential customers is key.

I’m first looking at a company called Eir. They are the largest fixed, mobile, and broadband telecommunications company in Ireland. It would be expected with their resources available all inbound marketing approaches to be prevalent. The second, a small coffee bistro called Bitesize in a medium-sized town with a smaller budget and having to maximize their resources to the full. These two companies albeit very different, are providing a service to customers and some inbound hallmark traits should be present in their marketing mix strategies.

(Fig 2) Landing page for Eir website

When first opening up the website of Eir (www.eir.ie) I’m first considering their valuable content, to achieve this, I will as an example, I’ll portray myself as a potential customer looking for a good deal on fixed broadband, a phone line and mobile sim card together in one package. As I open the landing page, I see offers, this is the engaging marketing strategy outlined by Hubspot, however, the offers are confusing and difficult to isolate what it pertains to, what they are doing well is showcasing their core business promotional strategy, which is no limit data, which is already repeated on the landing page twice. As a customer I’m looking for a bundle deal, broadband, a phone line, and mobile sim card together, however, I cannot see a tab for this. There is no chatbot for Eir, however, there is a live chat tool (https://www.eir.ie/appchat/) which enabled me to which when attempted, directs me to the page with the bundles, response time was quite good and courteous.

I have also attempted to speak with them through social media, their response via Twitter was slow, about 5 hours after initially writing, however, Facebook turned out much faster, within about 20 minutes for a response. When it comes to engagement, I think there are positivity’s that can be observed, but also improvements. When it comes to enticing new audience members, the message is both at times chaotic, confusing and cluttered. I struggled to differentiate which deal was pertinent to which service, although it did appear they had a good unique selling point, it was lost in the noise of other random products not following any theme specifically. If I was a novice at technology and didn’t know what I wanted specifically, I would have found this website overwhelming and visually overbearing.

In terms of a marketing mix regarding content, I don’t see a blog or video content, there are many heavily treated photoshopped images and bright vector graphics which does elude to a younger target audience however there is plenty of room for improvement when it comes to creating valuable targeted keywords for organic search results, breaking up the content with video and simplifying their message, what they are selling in simpler terms or even including a glossary to explain terminologies. That brings me on to the next phase of the inbound marketing strategy of support, especially to existing customers, according to Hubspot, called ‘Delight’. Their number is easily accessible and also contactable via social media. I am also looking at another aspect which is crucial, and not simply limited to keywords, it’s SEO (search engine optimisation).

As outlined on Hubspot ‘How to Create an SEO Strategy for 2020’ (https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/seo-strategy), they have established that there are three types of strategies an SEO can focus on; On-page SEO, Off-page SEO and Technical SEO. On-page refers to the content on the pages you see whilst browsing a web page. Here is the opportunity to optimise keywords in order to achieve a higher ranking for the chosen online platform, whether on the computer, mobile phone, or tablet. Off-page – refers to links directing to your website, backlinks, and publishers harboring those links. These links build trust in the eyes of a search engine which in turn helps a website climb the rankings. The technical SEO – this is the backend development of the site that deals in code, a search engine looks for code as much as it does content when ranking a site. How sites appear on mobile phones is increasingly becoming important since most of us are now searching and browsing on phones when browsing Eir.ie, the User Experience (UX) appears stable, functional, and easy to use with relevant information clearly visible including the labeledonline chat function. As outlined in Search Engine Land (https://searchengineland.com/four-pillars-effective-seo-strategy-285584), how your pages are labelled and organised is an important considering hierarchy. When this applies to Eir, I believe this is achieved. Page titles are broken into the companies core elements and simplified, which is ‘Broadband, Mobile, TV, Sport’ and a help page, this makes it easier for SEO.

Another consideration is the meta description for SEO, as Search Engine Watch describes (https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2019/05/22/nine-types-of-meta-descriptions-that-win-more-clicks/) this is a short description of the page that shows as you are searching on the search engine, this is something that should be considered as a short advert for a page and can influence those potentially visiting a site. This should be short, focused, to the point and contain clear keywords that lead to a call to action that is appealing to the individual site. Eir’s meta description – “Unlimited broadband, mobile & TV deals on Ireland's Gigabit Fibre network. Great value bundles from just €29.99 a month. Let's make it possible!” This appears to get to the point of their sales pitch and also has its company slogan of let's make possible.

Now I’m looking at the significance of their images, and what they have done in terms of inbound marketing. Labelling images can help with search bots who crawl through the internet trying to index information and sort in terms of relevance, how you label images helps this process. Taking a small sample size from Eir, some are labelled well, some are random and not, it’s hard to say if this was a conscious effort on their behalf, I think in some cases yes.

(Fig 3) Bitesize display an array of inbound marketing techniques

The other company I am observing is a small coffee café shop called Bitesize. Smaller budget and also providing a service, coffee and cakes than internet services. First thing I notice when I go to theilabeledr landing page is the rather clear layout. Ordering online has become a priority with Covid19 restrictions lately, this option appears to be quite easy. They have a blog which is quirky and fun with post frequency difficult to determine since there is no date that I can see, I can not determine if they have a posting schedule for their blog, on social media it appears relatively random, from once a week to every two to three days, the blog layout is three in a row thumbnails that opens up to a full page as you open them up, I’d suggest this works for them as it looks informal. They are active on social media and you can subscribe to a monthly newsletter and a good varied marketing mix, written, images and also video. I think this small company has covered most of the inbound marketing tools available to them accept questions and answers however I think this was consciously omitted since this is a small premises and it’s clear what they do, there is also a ‘Bitesize Life’ tab which goes into detail about their daily routine. On the whole, I feel a lot of thought has gone into their marketing approach which does result in organic search results for them.

Their Meta description – “We are a bakery that makes wondrous cakes and treats and serve them in our friendly café in Midleton, along with coffee. Mahon Point and Midleton Farmers”. This is short and makes it very clear what they do.

When looking at their UX on a mobile platform, the site loads a little slow, I think due to the many images on the landing page which is loaded up as high resolution. Title pages appear relevant and in order of priority for them, for example prioritising ordering online comes first.

When looking at how their images are labelled, from a small sample size, I believe this to be good. Most images are first labeled with the company name and then a short description of what is in the image.

Reference List: Hubspot (n.d.) ‘What Is Inbound Marketing?’ [Online], Available at: https://www.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing [Accessed 1st July 2020].

Hubspot (n.d.) ‘How to Run an Inbound Marketing Campaign’ [Online], Available at: https://offers.hubspot.com/run-an-inbound-marketing-campaign [Accessed 1st July 2020].

Llewellyn G. (2020) ‘7 elements of an effective inbound marketing strategy’ [Online], Available at: https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/inbound-marketing-strategy/7-elements-of-an-effective-inbound-marketing-strategy/ [Accessed 1st July 2020].

Miller M. (2017) ‘The four pillars of an effective SEO strategy’ [Online] Available at: https://searchengineland.com/four-pillars-effective-seo-strategy-285584 [Accessed 22nd July 2020].

Williams J. (2019) ‘Nine types of meta descriptions that win more clicks’ [Online] Available at: https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2019/05/22/nine-types-of-meta-descriptions-that-win-more-clicks/ [Accessed 22nd July 2020].