A shift in Marketing
Steadily through my marketing career I have noticed the shift in marketing from traditional interruption based advertising to inbound attraction based marketing.
Companies are indeed using HubSpot in South Africa to do Inbound Marketing. This prompts some more questions which I will seek to answer: What’s driving the need for inbound marketing, and HubSpot [the software which enables it]?
South Africans, at Home, at Play and at Work are googling almost everything and anything. We’re getting much of our information from company websites. It would be fair to say that with the increasing roll-out of high-speed fibre optic lines connecting us to the internet that this is only the tip of the iceberg.
What does better, faster internet mean for South African digital marketing?
Digital marketing will continue to expand rapidly as companies realise that up to 80% of the traditional sales cycle is now taking place online. Future customers are researching their purchases online- the faster the internet the easier it is for them. They read reviews on your product, they download your catalogue, they browse your website and they bump into info on your product on their social media accounts. This is called the information gathering phase of the sales cycle and its no longer your sales person supplying the information.
Smart marketers are realising that their websites must evolve to start supplying prospective customers with the information they want. The company website can be a source of qualified leads, who have read up on your product, and are just needing a little extra human support to finish making their purchase decision.
Who are these smart marketers that are so ahead of the curve and already using HubSpot software?
A quick Google search will reveal WooRank, a company which rates the SEO friendliness of a website. They list “top 38 South African companies using HubSpot”. I can confidently say that the number is much bigger than that.
Summary
There are many companies using HubSpot in South Africa. The use of Marketing Automation software like HubSpot is going to increase massively as we tip over into better faster internet. This is because it will be easier to consume online content. Evolving your company website will mean that you can influence the prospective buyer from earlier in the sales cycle… like you used to do… in the good old ways when salespeople owned the whole sales cycle.
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