The principles of inbound design

Let’s go through these funnel stages:

• Attract– Draw visitors to your business with marketing initiatives, such as content and ads.
• Convert– Turn visitors into leads by giving them something of value in exchange for their information.
• Close– Nurture leads into customers by providing useful information.
• Retain– Retain customers by continually offering them additional value.
• Refer– Get referrals to drive new business from current customers by establishing yourself as a trusted business partner. These new leads enter at the top of the funnel and the cycle begins again.

This funnel is a combination of the HubSpot Inbound Methodology and Dave McClure’s Startup Metrics for Pirates. It is particularly useful because it can be applied to a variety of business models and clearly identifies steps that customers can take after purchase.

While marketing typically focuses on the top of the funnel, sales focuses on on selling, and product focuses on features and support, inbound design is concerned with the entire funnel: how many prospects the company attracts, how many of those prospects become qualified leads, how many of those qualified leads generate sales, how many of those sales become repeat sales, and how many of those repeat sales refer other prospects who purchase.

Only by concentrating on the entire funnel can you maximize growth. If you focus only on the “Attract” and “Convert” stages, you may get a lot of leads, but those leads might not result in sales. If your marketing ends at the “Close” stage, then you miss out on the opportunity to generate repeat purchases. If you ignore the “Refer” stage, then you miss out on an opportunity to cultivate happy customers who will promote your business. Focusing on the whole funnel gives you the opportunity to grow your business at each step.

Inbound design uses experimentation

One of the key ways inbound design differs from more traditional strategies is through its use of rapid experimentation to improve marketing effectiveness. The business environment is constantly changing, and there is no guarantee that traditional “best practices” or methods employed by others will work for your company. Plus, there are many emerging channels whose marketing value is yet unknown that could potentially drive growth.

The only way to know if a particular marketing strategy works is through experimentation. This is a framework I like to use to conduct experiments:

1. Research a marketing question.
2. Brainstorm potential influencing factors.
3. Prioritize what you think is the most influential factor.
4. Develop a test hypothesis around this factor.
5. Run the test.
6. Analyze the results. Rinse and repeat.

This is a straight-forward, six-step process that ensures that each experiment produces valuable information that can be used to design the next test. It can be tons of fun to “throw a lot of ideas at the wall and see if they stick,” but doing this won’t help you gain useful insights. Developing a testable hypothesis positions you to get the most out of your experiments.

You should be prepared for some of your experiments will fail, so you need to have a process that allows you to run experiments quickly to find those that will work. In other words, you need to “fail fast” to realize results. If it takes you six months to run an experiment, but it only takes your competition one month, you’ll quickly fall behind.

Inbound design targets specific markets

It goes without saying that you can’t market to everyone. Honestly, if you’re marketing to everyone, you’re marketing to no one.

Growth marketers know that prospects and customers demand a more personalized experience, and the only way companies can provide this is to know their target market “inside and out.” The best marketing successes are gained by uncovering hidden customer insights and crafting messaging that addresses them directly.

To find these hidden gems, you need to understand the “what” your target segment does, but more importantly, “why” they do it. This is where real insight comes from. By addressing the underlying motivations of your market, they motivate their audience to act more easily.

Inbound design relies on data

To uncover audience insights, you must have a ready supply of data. And this is directly addressed in the next part of the definition:

In order to draw valid conclusions from your experiments and benchmark your progress toward your goals, you must have a good method for tracking, recording, and analyzing data. This can be anything as simple as reviewing your website metrics and entering key metrics in Excel to purchasing an expensive, enterprise-level solution to track your marketing efforts.

The main point is that inbound design uses a standardized process to collect and learn from experiments. That way, you’re the best position to learn from past efforts.

Inbound design provides value

The knowledge gained from understanding the target segment and using the findings gained through rapid experimentation can be used to improve all of their processes—from marketing, to sales, to product. The inbound design strategy gives you the ability to test products before development, test marketing and sales messaging in real time, and improve customer support because they already have some idea of what their customers need, want, and expect.

Inbound design delivers results

Business success depends, in large part, on selecting a target market, understanding that market, and developing products and services specifically designed for that market. Without this, businesses tend to flounder because they don’t have an overarching mission to guide them.

Inbound design perfectly positions your company to gain market-specific insights that can drive business forward. And because you will be focused on specific market segments and continuously running experiments, you’ll find out sooner what will sell and what won’t, what messaging will work, and how best to retain customers before making costly investments. Yes, you’ll make mistakes along the way, but your mistakes will be small ones, not irretrievable disasters. And you’ll find the fastest way to drive business growth.

That’s the power of inbound design.

So, now that you know what inbound design is, let’s explore how to run a successful inbound design campaign.