How 5 Successful Small Businesses Increased Their Revenue Through Inbound Marketing

More and more LLCs and other small businesses have found many benefits by implementing inbound marketing into their strategies. What is inbound marketing? It’s a marketing effort that attracts prospects and customers to your business through relevant and helpful content. Once they are interested, you engage with them using conversational tools like email, social media, chat and more. By promising continued value and instilling trust, you can turn the prospect or lead into a customer.

Let’s take a look at five successful businesses that have been able to increase their revenue (among other things) through the use of inbound marketing.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame located in Cleveland, OH was trying to adapt and engage its customers in a different way, but its existing marketing tools weren’t connecting or providing the level of customer information and behavior necessary to execute a successful campaign.

Over time, customer expectations have changed from needing simple hours and location, to wanting guidance and immediate answers from local trusted sources. Through inbound marketing and a new CRM system, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame had the opportunity to tie all of these activities together. The specific CRM system chosen allowed the company to integrate Facebook Messenger, giving immediate access to customer questions and concerns — which started arriving within hours of implementation.

Now, any visitor who connects with the business through Messenger instantly becomes a database contact and can be tied into subsequent marketing efforts. This allowed the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to send more targeted relevant content than ever before. As a result, the company is seeing an 81 percent increase in audience size and 12 percent higher sales just by using Messenger.

InSinkErator

InSinkErator makes and sells food waste disposal units and instant hot water taps. The company worked with an advertising agency for all of its digital marketing needs, which was getting expensive and inefficient. Client information was housed in Excel and became difficult to manage.

Instead, InSinkErator brought all its marketing efforts in-house and started importing contacts into a new CRM system. The company's first marketing initiative with the system was an automated email campaign, during which it was able to send out a different email targeted to a specific audience over a set duration.

For example, InSinkErator had a set list of customers who had already purchased hot water taps. The company could then email those customers with another product that would pair perfectly with the taps. Coupled with additional targeted marketing initiatives, the company was able to increase its ecommerce revenue by 27 percent, and it saw a 39 percent increase in average transaction values.

Marketing Management IO

Marketing Management IO is an advertising agency that specializes in inbound marketing by helping its clients translate their business objectives into comprehensive digital marketing strategies. To provide its clients with the best results possible, the company implemented inbound methodology — including the use of CRM, marketing and sales software — which allowed it to better align its sales and marketing departments.

Soon, the company quickly gained traction in the marketplace, creating educational content that was relevant to its potential clients. Within 18 months of implementing inbound marketing and the use of a CRM system, Marketing Management IO achieved a 3X increase in revenue, 33X increase in leads and 95 percent of their clients are on retainer.

Plastic Printers

Plastic Printers produces one-of-a-kind luxury business cards, gift cards and other plastic card products all in-house. The company knew it had an opportunity to increase web traffic to leads through inbound marketing, but lacked the strategy and tools to make it happen.

Plastic Printers wasn't collecting as much information as it needed, and leads just weren’t converting. So the company implemented an inbound marketing strategy that would bring more visitors to their website by leveraging an already established social media presence to create leads through top-of-funnel offers. Through a CRM system, Plastic Printers could nurture these leads until they were ready to move forward with purchasing. These initiatives led to a 24 percent year-over-year increase in revenue, and a 64 percent conversion rate from leads to sales.

Strategic Internet Consulting

Founded in 1995, Strategic IC is a B2B digital marketing agency that specializes in inbound and account-based marketing. As the web evolved, its clients began to understand the importance of their websites' visibility.  This led them to execute initiatives like SEO, PPC advertising and content creation. The agency grew rapidly, but it was offering a collection of disconnected solutions.

Then, Strategic IO implemented inbound methodology. It created a ton of content around this methodology to share with prospects in order to educate them and eventually implement this methodology into its own processes, too. All information gathered from prospects goes into the company's CRM. The CRM gives everything a clear view of each lead’s journey through the website, and also allows the sales team to automate and improve its follow-ups with prospects.

Having this depth of data all in one place allows the sales team to create efficiencies and a very targeted and relevant message. Not only that, but Strategic IO now has 100 percent of its clients on retainers, a 35 percent increase in average retainer revenue and a 50 percent year-on-year increase in revenue.

Drive Revenue Growth

Unlike outbound marketing, with inbound marketing your business isn’t fighting for your customer’s attention. Creating content designed to address the problems and challenges of your ideal customers allows you to attract qualified prospects to build trust and credibility for your business.

Interested in learning more about different marketing initiatives that have a positive impact on your business? Check out Bizee’s blog for topics such as website design advice, building customer loyalty and more.