Inbound marketing is the secret to attracting and retaining long-term customers that are ready to become paying customers. This is the exact opposite of outbound marketing. Inbound marketing helps you invest in your brand visibility for the long haul. It is a powerful marketing tool with which you can build highly rewarding results.
What is Inbound Marketing?
To keep it simple, inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that puts you in front of customers who are looking for the services and products you’re offering. Unlike outbound marketing, inbound marketing employs a unique set of strategies that attracts the customers and prospects to you. The inbound marketing methodology helps you achieve this through consistent content creation; content in this regard refers to videos, articles, infographics, social media posts, and email messages/newsletters that answer the questions of your target audience and provide solutions to their problems. This is otherwise known as valuable content.
One striking difference between outbound and inbound marketing is that you already have what the prospects are looking for, so it is easier to convince them to buy. Conversions are much quicker and easier with a robust inbound marketing strategy than traditional outbound marketing. When executed correctly, inbound marketing earns you a top position in the minds of your target audience. It influences their feelings towards you, as well as their future marketing decisions. Inbound marketing methodology yields organic leads, meaning that you’ll have to roll up your sleeves to make it work.
The Inbound Marketing Methodology
The inbound marketing methodology helps you grow your brand by focusing on connecting and building valuable, lasting relationships with prospects and existing customers. This strategy aims to consistently provide value to customers, retain them with the best experience, while also listening to and incorporating their feedback into business processes.
Taking insight from HubSpot’s interactive inbound marketing methodology, three separate strategies come into play in this methodology; first, your brand uses irresistible and valuable content and conversations to attract the right people. Over time, they begin to see you as a thought leader and an authority in your niche. Secondly, it engages the target audience by offering rich insights and solutions that address their pain points and goals. This draws them to a point where they’re more likely to patronize you. Finally, inbound marketing strives to continually delight the customer by providing timely help and support that make their journey with you seamless and rewarding.
Benefits of Inbound Marketing
Boost your brand awareness: About 93% of B2B purchases start with online searches. SEO is what comes to mind here. If your business appears at the top of search results or is very visible within your target audience’s social network, chances are, you’ll rake in way more organic leads than usual. This means that your content marketing game must be top-notch and very active.
Generating more leads with less investment: Since inbound marketing builds for the long haul, you don’t need to go looking for the customers — they’ll come to you. This means that you don’t have to spend much on advertising. With quality content, the leads will come, even as you become more adept at creating and sharing the right content across the right channels.
Grow your brand authority: the best way to quickly rise to the top as a leader in your niche is by dishing out rich, valuable content. They should focus on educating, entertaining, and interacting with prospects and customers, guiding them to make a purchase. That way, you get them to trust your brand, making it easy for them to remember you when they are ready to buy.
Improve your ROI with less up-front investments: Generally, inbound marketing requires less up-front investment than other marketing strategies. When done correctly, it promises an amazing return on investment. Inbound marketing is essentially content marketing, and it generates 3X more leads per dollar than traditional methods.
How Does Inbounding Marketing Work?
If you’re looking to get started with inbound marketing, keep in mind that it involves in-depth planning and active implementation. Here are the important steps you want to pay attention to:
Define your business goals and buyer personas
First, you need to define who your target audience is, what they want, and where to find and engage them. Knowing this helped you to create and distribute the right content that will convert them into paying clients.
Consistently engage them with content
Again, you have to be smart when it comes to creating content- it must keep them hooked and always coming back for more. How do you achieve this? By using your brand’s strength to provide solutions and answers to the queries, needs, and challenges of your audience. You need to know what kind of conversations drive their interests the most. That way, you can build the kind of content that attracts and retains customers throughout their buying journey with your brand. These customers will eventually announce your brand to others.
Carefully select your delivery platforms
To drive traffic to your website, you can use any of these platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and your blog. However, you need to find out which ones drive the most engagements, then push more content on those channels.
Have a content calendar
To maintain a constant stream of fresh and relevant content, you need to create a content calendar and run with it. You may also need to review and update old blog posts, stay in tune with current market trends, and make adjustments where necessary.
Get customers’ feedback and analyze your results
In order to optimize your inbound marketing efforts, you need to be able to incorporate feedback from your audience and analyze the results you get. Luckily, there are a number of metrics that make it easy to do this. Also strive to make it easy for your audience, including prospects, to share their thoughts. That’s how they know that their choices matter to you, helping you build their trust in your brand.
This is important and will ultimately help you in improving your inbound marketing strategy for the long term.
Want to Learn More?
We’ll be glad to hear from you and learn how we can help you optimize your inbound marketing program. At Mission HR, we look forward to using our insights and expert guidance on how to improve your inbound marketing results. We use our digital marketing expertise to help businesses successfully implement the best growth strategies for their businesses.
Also, as leading partners in the PEO, HR, payroll, and benefits outsourcing marketplace, we provide result-oriented services for small and medium-sized organizations and government contractors, serving as a trusted partner in integrated human resource compliance, risk management, employee benefits, employment practices liability insurance (EPLI), and payroll processing.