70% of consumers prefer to learn about a brand from content, rather than advertising. If you want to build a more successful business, it’s a good idea to implement an inbound marketing strategy.
In the age of the internet, digital marketing is now the best way to reach customers and get new leads. Among the strategies that can be used online, inbound marketing is one of the most popular and most effective.
So how does marketing work and how you can you use it in your business? In this guide, we’ll tell you everything you need to know.
What Are Inbound Marketing Techniques?
Inbound marketing is a popular business methodology that is used for attracting leads, providing value, and getting sales.
Inbound marketing strategies make use of content to move a potential customer through a sales funnel and to build a strong ongoing relationship with them. As opposed to outbound marketing techniques such as cold calling, inbound marketing works to attract a customer by providing value first and foremost.
Only after providing value does a company attempt to move a customer through the sales funnel and finally make a purchase.
Reasons to Use an Inbound Marketing Strategy
As opposed to taking an outbound marketing approach, there are many reasons why a company should consider using inbound marketing techniques. Here are some of the benefits of an inbound marketing strategy.
It’s Cost-Effective
One of the top advantages of inbound marketing is that it’s cost-effective. Inbound marketing is suitable for any size business because it’s possible to start small. A business can also create content that continues to get more leads as time goes by.
As opposed to running TV or billboard ads, content marketing is cost-effective and can get results for your business without requiring you to constantly throw more money at the strategy. Inbound marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing.
Customers Prefer Inbound Marketing
Many customers get annoyed by traditional advertising techniques and would prefer to learn about a business through content instead.
With inbound marketing, a customer can learn about your business or product in a natural way without feeling like you’re being too pushy. This can allow your business to build stronger and more authentic connections with customers.
It’s a Long-Term Strategy
A big benefit of content marketing is that it can continue helping your business gain leads indefinitely.
Once you create content, it has a long lifespan. Blog posts can continue getting traffic from Google for months and years. Infographics, e-books, and case studies can continue working for your business over time as you republish and repurpose them.
When compared to outbound marketing methods such as cold calling and cold emailing, however, you’ll only get results in the short term. You’ll need to keep putting in constant work and attention to get results.
It Builds Trust
One of the biggest reasons that inbound marketing is a good strategy is because it can build trust with consumers.
By providing value early on and working to educate and inform your customers, they’ll learn to trust your company. They’ll also see your brand as an authority in your industry.
As a customer gains more familiarity with your business, they’ll slowly warm up to the idea of buying a product from you.
Steps to the Inbound Marketing Methodology
There are a few main steps to the inbound marketing methodology. Here’s what you should know about them.
1. Attract
The first step to inbound marketing is attracting a customer.
To do this, you’ll need to understand your target audience. You should create buyer personas and then create content that resonates with them.
It’s important to get as detailed as you can about who your customers are, what they want to learn, what their needs are, etc. Once you know what they need and what they want to learn, you can then create content that provides value to them and naturally attracts them to your site.
You’ll also need to use search engine optimization (SEO). This will help ensure that your content is easy to find when your ideal customer searches for questions and information on Google. With a great SEO strategy in place, your ideal customer will discover your content. They’ll end up on your site reading the content that was crafted with their specific needs in mind.
2. Engage
The next step in inbound marketing is to engage a customer who has landed on a blog post or webpage. This stage could also be split into two separate stages, including the “Convert” and “Close” stages.
Once a customer has come into contact with your business, you’ll then try to get them to engage with it. This could include inspiring them to take an action such as giving you their email address or calling you.
To get their email address, you’ll likely want to provide something of value to them, known as a lead magnet. The valuable content you provide could be many different things. It could be a short ebook, a white paper, a free trial, a webinar, or something else.
Once you have the contact information of a customer, you can stay on their radar with the help of email marketing. You can slowly or quickly encourage them to make a purchase. Once you’ve received their contact information, it becomes a lot more likely that you’ll be able to convince them to buy from you.
3. Delight
In the inbound marketing methodology, making a single sale isn’t the end of the line. The goal is to build an ongoing relationship with a customer and to encourage them to make more purchases in the future.
It’s important to continue to provide value to a customer over time with your email marketing strategy. You should also ensure that there’s more content for them to check out on your website, even after making a purchase. Make sure that in addition to introductory blog content, you also provide additional educational content that loyal customers can learn from and enjoy.
By building an ongoing relationship with your customers, you’ll be likely to get more sales from them as time goes on.
Understanding How Inbound Marketing Works
If you want to build a stronger online presence and get more sales, you should understand the inbound marketing methodology. Building an inbound marketing strategy can be a powerful, cost-effective way to get more customers online.
Need help getting leads for your business? Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.