5 Reasons will make you fall in love with inbound marketing.

“Inbound marketing is so powerful because you have the power to give the searcher/consumer exactly what answers they are looking for at the precise point that they need it. That builds trust, reputation, and authority in whatever niche you are practicing this form of marketing in.” – Joshua Gill

 

Did you know that marketers who prioritize their blogs are 13 times more likely to receive a positive ROI?

And that 80% of decision-makers prefer to get information from articles more than ads?

Add to this, 55% of marketers said that blog content is their top priority for inbound marketing?

 

Inbound marketing starts with blogging. If you are not blogging, you should start now! Blogging is the key to successful internal marketing, but what is inbound marketing and how did it start?

 

History of inbound marketing:

 

The concept of inbound marketing didn’t see the light until 2005 after the name was coined by Brian Holligan, co-founder and CEO of Hubspot. Although it appeared on the online world in 2007, it really started growing in 2012.

 

During this it faced a lot of difficulties. However, in the end it made a great success with the rise of SEO and content marketing

 

What is inbound marketing?

 

Inbound marketing is the process of helping potential clients find your company. By reaching this customer even before he/she is ready to make the purchase. Contacting customers early can turn them into brand advocates, and ultimately, permanent customers, which causes an increased revenue.

 

• Inbound marketing is a strategy that uses many forms of marketing such as content marketing, blogging, search engine optimization, and social media. Its goal remains to introduce the brand widely and attract new revenue. While outbound marketing is looking for mass customers, inbound one focuses on achieving desired results, so potential buyers come directly to you. Rather than simply “grabbing attention,” companies that use inbound marketing focus on new approaches, aiming to build awareness, developing relationships, and generating leads.

In short, it is a technique for attracting users to products and services and generating new customers via content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine optimization.

 

Inbound marketing improves customer experience and builds trust by providing the information potential customers need and posting sponsored content on multiple social media platforms.

 

Characteristics of internal marketing:

1. Reaching target audiences:

This is done by providing brand’s content in the perfect timing and within the advertising campaigns that meet customers needs.

 

2. Understanding the buyer’s journey well:

It strictly embraces the milestones of your potential clients and their key contact points.

 

3. Building a strong relationship with your potential customer:

As you know, the most important marketing law is “getting a new customer is more expensive, so it is recommended to keep the customers you already have”. Keeping existed customers is the main goal of inbound marketing.

 

What is meant by outbound marketing?

Outbound marketing uses tactics to deliver a message to a large number of people in an effort to make a sale. It targets a large audience of people through print, TV and radio ads, phone calls, direct mails, group emails and other methods (most of the customers may not even look for the product marketed for it). It is a one-way conversation that usually focuses on the product and the reasons why the audience should buy it.

 

Inbound marketing vs outbound marketing:

 

Inbound marketing:

1. Attracting interested followers
2. Meeting the needs of consumers
3. Interacting with clients
4. With the sharing of useful content, audiences become your potential customers.

 

Where you see it:

All forms of digital marketing such as, content marketing, SEO, blogging, and others.

 

Outbound Marketing:

1. Mass messages
2. Achieving sales only
3. One-way communication
4. Not focusing on targeting individually

 

Where you see it:

TV ads, billboards, internet pop-up ads, and magazines.

 

Inbound marketing funnel:

 

Inbound marketing focuses on the details of (buyer journey) whose content depends on three stages. In order to transfer the regular visitor into a permanent client, you must go through:

1. Awareness-raising stage:

Here, you must define your presence in the virtual world by promoting your business in a special way.

2. Engagement stage:

Sharing is where you start talking to potential clients. You can engage them with any form of entertainment or information content.

3. Sign-up stage:

At this point, your potential customer knows who you are and may have dealt with you in one way or another. Here comes your turn to strengthen the bonds of trust and interest with him/her.

 

The content you create will be basic or generic depends on where the lead is on the journey. For example, long content such as e-books is more suitable for someone in the sign-up stage, while posting a blog or a short video is better for someone still in the awareness raising stage.

 

Each stage requires an appropriate tactic that matches your customer needs.

 

What are examples of inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is a term that encompasses a lot of unique tactics.

After all, there is more than one way to attract a potential customer to your website. Like:

1. Blogging
2. Social media campaigns
3. Electronic books
4. Search Engine Optimization
5. Video marketing

The list goes on…

 

ROI for inbound marketing:

How can you be sure that the money you invested in inbound marketing will give you the return you expect? Unlike other traditional marketing activities, you are actually able to measure inbound marketing ROI. So how do you get the results you expect from it?

An essential part of the methodology outlined is to track customer’s digital steps throughout the journey from the first time a visitor clicks on the website until they end up as a customer.

 

Inbound marketing methodology is based on the idea of a sales funnel that focuses on (buyer journey). Through a number of stages during the buying process, the key element in the measurement process remains the “user”. If you want to know what is the secret that makes any vistor a member of your brand family, you need to know the types of users:

 

1. Visitor: Someone browses your website for the first time.
2. Potential customer: A visitor has provided contact information, often when downloading content you shared.
3. A potential customer who is ready to buy: A potential customer who has expressed additional interest in your product through their behavior on your website and through interaction with your emails.
4. A potential customer who makes a sale: Because of his interaction with your content, he/she clearly showed interest in making the purchase, so that the sales department must communicate with him/her.
5. The permanent customer who signs the deal.

 

The presence of each person in the process of measuring ROI has an impact on the results, so it is necessary to understand these types and know how to deal with each one of them to convert the visitor into a permanent customer and gain a greater return on investment.

 

OK! This takes us to the most important point, which is:

 

Inbound marketing and generating leads:

 

Statistics show that inbound marketing practices generate 65% more new customers than traditional outbound one.

 

Inbound marketing is all about generating leads, so it is not surprising that companies that faced major changes in customer’s behavior during “buyer journey” have become in favor of this approach. So how do you use inbound marketing to generate leads?

 

With inbound marketing main strategy (which is the process of converting your website visitors into leads), a visitor is converted into a lead once they demonstrate an interest in something you have offered. For example, you could offer to attract them a free e-book. Offers should be providing really useful content that solves the problems they’re already facing. While preparing for the process of generating new customers, it is necessary to focus on a set of steps, namely:

 

Step 1. Understand different personas of clients.

Step 2. Create a content strategy.

Step 3. Match your content to the buyer’s journey.

Step 4. Get the contact information.

Step 5. Use workflows to keep content as it should.

Step 6. Don’t forget to analyze the result.

Step 7. Use social media marketing.

Step 8. Contact Shibly Marketing and let us create a well-thought-out inbound marketing strategy for you.

These steps will be discussed in detail in our upcoming articles except for the last step because we advise you to follow it directly! Just contact us now!

 

Investing in inbound marketing can achieve effective targeting of audiences who are already looking for your product or service. By creating high-quality content that adds value to these leads using the above-mentioned tactics, inbound marketing will provide more qualified leads and a better return on investment that will help you reach your sales goals.

 

Applying some tactics is not enough. You need to align all of these tactics if you want to get the best results when it comes to increasing your website traffic and receiving a new influx of qualified leads.

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Resources:

hubspot.com

weidert.com

marketing-schools.org