In the marketing field “ad blocking” is one of the scariest terms out there. After a company spends thousands of dollars on banner, video, embedded audio, popup, and text ads people can now easily block them all with just a click of a button. Some digital marketing campaigns can be killed in an instant and that’s money lost for the company. These companies now need to find a way to reach their target audience without wasting money and missing out on potential sales. These tech-savvy, forward thinkers are who companies want to reach, so they are using different tactics such as inbound marketing to battle ad blocking and to get noticed.
So far this year, ad blocking has contributed to an estimated loss of global revenue of $21.8B (PageFair, 2015). That should alarm any business that is not using inbound marketing to close leads. Instead of reaching out to potential customers and getting their hands virtually slapped away, companies can utilize search engine optimization, blogs, e-books, landing pages, and social media to entice people to seek them out.
How Inbound Marketing Wins the Battle
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Builds Relationships
Inbound marketing isn’t just about a pitch and a sale. It’s not about throwing products in someone’s face and hoping to get noticed. It’s about building relationships with potential customers, no matter where they are in the buying process. People want to get to know the brand and all it has to offer before making that decision whether to do business with the company or not. They don’t need unwanted ads flashing in their face from a company they have no clue about.
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Drowns Out the Noise
When someone visits a webpage and an embedded video clip automatically plays, they may choose to block the ad and the company’s message would never be received. When inbound marketing is implemented, a person is usually seeking out information and the company’s message is received loud and clear.
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Assists in Every Step of the Sales Funnel
Most people ad block because they don’t want to get inundated with unsolicited digital information. Once that ad is block, there’s no getting through to the potential customer and there’s no way to enter the sales funnel. The top of the funnel is where people are looking at different solutions to their problems, but are not ready to buy. Ads can be blocked at this stage and potential customers will never make it to the middle of the funnel (actively shopping around) or the bottom of the funnel (the buyers).
Do you want more information about inbound marketing? Contact us for a free consultation, to see how a new inbound marketing strategy can help you.