So, What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing focuses on pulling audiences’ interest through valuable experiences which results in a positive impact.
It is based on the premise of earning a customer as opposed to “buying” a customer through outbound marketing. The pull effect is created by generating helpful, online marketing assets that is designed to address your ideal customers’ problems and needs. By creating this aid, you are able to build trust and credibility for your business and continue to attract your ideal customer’s attention.
Despite giving consumers more control over the information that they interact with, inbound marketing techniques allow for business to reach their targeted ideal customer through relevant content that enhances the brand, generates leads and improves sales.
Inbound marketing is made up of 3 stages: attract, engage, and delight.
You can attract through creating visually appealing ads or content that directly solves your customer’s problem.
Engaging material comes through with email marketing or conversational bots that utilize these dialogues to create lasting relationships.
We then have delight, the method of using email and marketing to deliver the right information to the right person and continue to create memorable content.
In short, it is about adding value at every stage of your customer’s journey.
The Benefits of Inbound Marketing:
For starters, inbound marketing has the potential to grow your digital marketing strategy by aligning your content with your customer’s interests. It brings your brand to the customer’s front of mind as a solution to their problem.
Secondly, inbound marketing has a higher ROI. This form of marketing focuses on earning and building a customer’s trust and relationship through interesting content. When comparing this online content to traditional marketing strategies such as billboards or TV ads, the cost is significantly less and you are able to target content to customers who are actually listening to your message.
Not convinced? Mashable lists the facts:
- 44% of direct mail is never opened. That’s a waste of time, postage and paper.
- 86% of people skip through television commercials.
- 84% of 25 to 34-year-olds have clicked out of a website because of an “irrelevant or intrusive ad.”
- The cost per lead in outbound marketing is more than for inbound marketing.
- Inbound marketing costs 62% less than traditional, outbound marketing tactics.
(Source: Mashable)
Through inbound marketing, you are able to enhance your brand and its authority. Considering that building a brand incorporates how your customers and other parties interact with your business and how it is perceived.
Now, you may not be able to determine how these parties will perceive your business but through inbound marketing, you are able to influence their recognition. By connecting with your ideal customers online with valuable and quality content, you are able to add value to their lives.
Adding value to your customers’ lives highlights your brand and illuminates your brand as a leader in your industry. People will begin to trust your brand and trust your word. Custom Content Council highlights this by stating that 61% of people are more likely to buy from a brand that delivers valuable content.
Lastly, inbound marketing will help generate higher quality leads online for your business. How?
As leads are generated through search engine functionalities and through your site’s ranking amongst targeted keywords, creating quality content will only enhance your leads. Through generating and providing shareable content to your potential customers, social media users will more likely share it across their social media networks. This will not only help drive visitors to your site but this will help generate inbound link that will affect your SEO and rankings.
With more people clicking through to your website and interacting with your brand, inbound marketing will help transform these visitors from potential customers to customers. Strategies such as email marketing will help nurture these leads and guide them through your provided sales funnel. This process is vital in order to maintain customer loyalty, trust and added customer value.
Inbound Marketing in a Nutshell:
It is clear to see that with the technological advances developing within the internet that inbound marketing offers a variety of opportunity for your brand and business. There has been a distinct move away from telling customers what they need to creating relationships with customers and listening to their wants and needs. Inbound marketing will allow for this relationship to be created and target your product or service to be your customer’s first choice.
