What investors are looking for when they analyze a startup is a proven, sustainable and scalable business model. In other words, we have to show them that the project holds up today and that it is capable of reaping big Swaziland Email List tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. The inbound marketing meets these requirements. It is a long-term strategy based on performance analysis, iteration, continuous improvement and large-scale business development . It also makes it possible to gain notoriety at a lower cost and therefore to appear on the radar of investors.
1. Inbound marketing: reassure investors with figures
Above all, investors seek reassurance. They therefore expect a young shoot to adopt a clear, rational and realistic strategy. And figures to prove that said strategy works. This means that you have to closely monitor your activity and measure its performance . Week after week. This is what inbound marketing allows for startups: all your marketing actions are recorded, followed and analyzed .
Marketing automation tools like Hubspot, Marketo, Pardot or Act-on indeed allow you to automatically produce detailed reports on your marketing activity . It is thus possible to calculate the impact and the ROI of each action and each campaign. Hosted a webinar or produced a white paper? You will know closely how many Leads, MQLs and clients they generated and how much it cost you. This makes it easy to calculate your efficiency, document your progress over time, and show it to investors.
Inbound marketing: show that a startup’s activity is scalable
Content is the cornerstone of inbound marketing. To generate traffic and contacts and then convert them into customers, startups regularly launch campaigns around premium content. Concretely, it involves producing a white paper or organizing a webinar and promoting it on social networks and through blog articles. If the content is relevant and well targeted, it’s a strategy that pays off . As long as you regularly produce content and promote it well , your lead source won’t run dry. It is therefore possible to create inbound campaigns indefinitely, and therefore to continue to drink sales with fresh MQL every week.
This allows you to generate more and more leads as you get to know your typical customers better. Your content is increasingly targeted and your campaigns more effective. Your future problem will therefore not be to generate MQLs, but to have enough salespeople to process them behind. Inbound marketing therefore makes it possible to demonstrate the scalability potential of your activity. These are sweet arguments that should delight investors.
Some tools like Hubspot even make it possible to identify the origin of the contacts generated: organic traffic, social networks, email, referral sites, etc. This is ideal for knowing which channels to direct your investments (to the most efficient, those that generate the most profits) and to optimize those that do not give satisfactory results . Yet another argument to convince investors through inbound marketing and show that your strategy is scalable.
Traditional Marketing versus Inbound Marketing
To convince an investor, you must first be present in his field of vision. However, inbound marketing allows startups to establish notoriety at a lower cost.The number one goal is to occupy as much space as possible, without emptying your boxes. For this, inbound marketing offers several solutions: social networks, content (blogging, premium content) and SEO in particular. This has the double advantage of mobilizing only internal resources and of being able to precisely calculate the scope and impact of these communications.
By making the necessary efforts, you will quickly gain notoriety. To do this, you need to publish quality content on your blog every week, communicate every day on social networks and organize continuous inbound campaigns. It’s a difficult pace to maintain in the long term, but startups who adhere to this rigorous discipline will be rewarded: they will establish their reputation and gain visibility.
Here’s just one example of their email newsletter. email newsletter examples Notice that there is very little written content in this email message. Instead of bombarding the reader with the details of the conference, SXSW aims to engage the subscriber visually and get them back to the site to register. The call-to-action buttons are easy to see with a yellow background and black text. The text is clear and simple, encouraging readers to “register now” for the event. The email also uses an impending deadline for discounted registration as a motivator for readers to act immediately.
