Using Inbound Marketing for Communication Service Companies

Inbound marketing is a highly effective method of attracting qualified leads to a communication service company by creating content designed specifically for them. Inbound marketing works because it focuses on being helpful and relevant over being disruptive and invasive.

This article focuses on the unique ways communication service companies and telecommunication service providers can use inbound marketing to attract qualified prospects. To break it down even further, this is what inbound marketing looks like in action, in four simple steps:

Step 1: Attract visitors using highly targeted content, SEO, social media, advocate channels, referral channels, blogs, RSS subscriptions, third-party publications, and email marketing.

See related: You can use targeted advertising and PPC with Inbound marketing to increase exposure.

Step 2: Convert visitors to leads using calls to action, landing pages, sharable content, and content offers.

See related: Improve Lead Generation Using Gated Content

Step 3: Turn leads into customers using email marketing, workflows, lead scoring, and CRM and marketing automation.

See related: The CMO guide to marketing automation

Step 4: Inform, inspire, and educate your leads and customers over time, so they become loyal advocates. Stay in touch via email, targeted and personalized content, and social media.

Using Inbound Marketing for Communication Service Companies

Inbound marketing works to drive qualified MVNO, IoT, OEM, and mobile carrier leads to your communication service company because it meets the senior decision makers at these organizations exactly where they are. Telecom marketing is much more effective when a solid Inbound foundation is built, focusing on key personas.

The reality is that, as a communication service company, your target market is online -- researching solutions to their unique problems, potential partnerships, industry trends, and innovative technologies to power their offerings. To attract and become visible to these leads, your company needs to show up in their search results as a credible advisor offering expert guidance and industry news.

Inbound marketing ensures that qualified leads find your company online by creating content designed specifically for them. From there, your company can capture their contact information, nurture them with targeted communications, and ultimately turn them into loyal customers and brand advocates.

To that end, here's how communication service companies can begin using inbound marketing:

1. Identify buyer personas and develop a content strategy. The key to an effective inbound marketing strategy is to tailor it to the needs, interests, and pain points of your target market. For communication service companies, you’ll need to tweak your approach to reach each of the multiple industries you want to attract.

To begin, segment the markets your company wants to target, and get to know key buyers in each of those industries. What unique challenges do they face? What are their pain points? What are their core business objectives? From there, identify the benefits and value your company can offer each industry. For example, if you're targeting IoT service providers, does your technology, service, or solution help them save money on infrastructure management? If you’re targeting MVNOs, do you provide a solution that adds value to their service, allowing them to attract new customers? Identifying this value is critical, as it will inform and define your content strategy.

From there, identify buyer interests to make sure you’re creating content that appeals to your target market. Identify the kind of information each market will find enjoyable or helpful. For example, IoTs are exceptionally interested in related news and technology, so a portion of your strategy should be dedicated to creating content around those topics.

2. Document a keyword strategy. To make sure qualified leads find your content, you need to speak their language. In action, this looks like targeting the precise keywords those individuals use when researching solutions, new technologies, and partnership opportunities online.

We recommend incorporating short (competitive) keywords like "managed mobility services" and long tail (less competitive) keywords like "device management solutions for OEMs". Targeting both is a best practice because decision makers naturally progress from broad, highly competitive keywords to middle funnel queries that are in longer form as their research advances. We also recommend revisiting your keywords on a regular basis, as new technology and industry trends will shape your strategy.

3. Post authoritative content regularly. To attract leads as a communication service company, you need to be positioned as a trusted advisor who can help prospects achieve their goals -- whether they want to increase their effectiveness in the market, reduce infrastructure and management costs, or power their offerings.

To that end, we recommend sharing authoritative content that solves your target market's unique problems, provides immense value, and positions your company as a trusted expert. Offer specialized content for each industry you want to attract and address their unique challenges, interests, and pain points. We also recommend creating educational content that directly communicates how your products and services can help each industry power their offerings, reduce costs, and simplify device configuration and management.

4. Leverage gated content. Gated content is a piece of premium, branded content that visitors can only access after filling out a form and providing key information, like their email address, location, and company name. Once they have completed the form, your company can then nurture the lead with continuous, targeted communications. From there, we recommend leveraging progressive profiling to obtain increasingly detailed information over time to gain valuable insight into their needs, problems, and opportunities.

To begin, tailor in-depth guides and resources to target the precise pain points each industry faces. For example, provide MVNOs with a resource on how they can reduce costs associated with service deployment and the management of M2M devices, and offer a separate resource on how IoT providers can cost-effectively manage their complex infrastructure. Make sure prospects from each industry will immediately understand that this piece of content was created for them. Feature your gated content on your website, in newsletters, and on social media, and ask your advocates and influencers to do the same.

See related: Attracting MVNO B2B leads with Inbound Marketing