What You Should Know about Inbound Marketing
Our fast-paced society, along with the complexities of the internet and social networking, has made it difficult for businesses to fully understand the buying behavior of their target consumers. Today’s marketers have come to the realization that outbound efforts are not enough to increase sales and produce profits. Because of this, businesses have turned their attention towards different inbound marketing tactics to gain more leads and strengthen brand preference. This new approach to marketing is a far cry from the traditional techniques that have been practiced over the past decades, forcing businesses to adjust to the said changes accordingly. You may also see marketing reports.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is more of an approach than a strategy. It centers on attracting customers through the use of relevant content, and by adding value to every step of a buyer’s journey. You don’t go on finding customers, you let the customers come to you with the help of various channels such as websites, blogs, search engines, and social media networks. You may also see marketing checklists.
So, how can a business turn complete strangers into loyal supporters?
Attract. Convert. Close. Delight — these are the four phases involved in inbound marketing. To turn strangers into visitors, leads, customers, and promoters, the business should implement effective sales and customer strategies. The business must study and analyze the buying behavior of consumers in order to design marketing campaigns that will appeal to them. Fortunately, the four standard phases of inbound marketing can serve as a guide for businesses to adapt to the fast-changing needs of its respective audience.
1. Attract
The content strategy would be your best weapon to turn visitors into potential leads for your business. Creating timely and relevant content for your blogs and social media pages is a great way to entice visitors. Consider the different strategies involved in e-commerce marketing to effectively generate traffic to your sites. This will help increase your online presence by giving visitors exactly what they’re looking for.
2. Convert
Once you have attracted visitors to your site, you need to convert them into leads by reaching out to them. This connection may be achieved by building an interactive experience for the site visitors. Answer questions and provide valuable content in order to keep the conversation going. You may chat with visitors to respond to any inquiries and concerns they may have as well. Acquiring data through the use of forms is also an excellent way to optimize future interactions for a better conversion process. You may also see brand marketing.
3. Close
After you’ve successfully turned your visitors into leads, then you need to exert extra marketing efforts to transform them into your customers. Email marketing is one way to win over prospects. You need to focus on providing useful content for the most promising leads, specifically those who exhibit behavior and actions that may lead to a sale.
4. Delight
In this phase, it’s all about leaving customers satisfied with your brand as a whole. This involves consistency and commitment to connect with prospects using various tools and channels. But this time, you need to create smart content that will cater to the demands of different customers. You may also see marketing goals.
By crafting content that can address the needs and problems of your target customers, you can build credibility for your business to draw in promising prospects.
Inbound Marketing Techniques You Should Try
From organic search traffic to opt-in email forms, here are five inbound marketing approaches to help your business grow:
1. Give Away a Free Guide
One way to generate organic traffic to your website is to publish free guidelines that are relevant to the nature of your business. This will serve as a library of resources for individuals seeking for information on a particular subject matter. It’s important to create guidelines on specific topics that will cater to certain types of visitors. Each publication could be over a thousand words long, containing significant information that visitors may use as a reference for a study or research. While not all visitors are instant customers, some of them may grow curious about your business, opening doors for potential transactions. You may also see marketing presentations.
2. Optimize Keywords
Inbound marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) are basically synonymous with one another; and since one of the most notable features of SEO involves the use of keywords, utilizing keywords on your website is one way to effectively gain traffic. Though some may argue that keywords aren’t as significant as they were in the past, the chances of people using a search engine to look for content like yours are still there. You may also see internet marketing.
To optimize on these keywords, you can begin by focusing on a few valuable terms and creating special pages for them on your website. Tracking and targeting a thorough list of keywords may seem like a good option, but it would be best to take it slow by starting with a specific variety first. Some websites even optimize on long-tail (or less searched) yet relevant keywords in order to come out on top of the search rank in that particular category. You may also see relationship marketing examples.
3. Build Your Brand
For entities involved in the world of marketing, most especially startups, building your personal brand is a key step to effective marketing. In this promotional strategy, marketers present themselves to target audiences as leaders. Your personal brand will serve as a support system to help draw attention towards your business. These individuals often publish articles that offer business-centered advice and the like for those who seek them. In fact, you can find many of these personalities in various forums, blogs, and social platforms online. You may also see marketing and sales.
4. Interact with Social Media
For the average user, social media serves as a channel for connecting with people from around the world. It has become our source of information on the latest news in socioeconomic issues, politics, and pop culture.
But for marketers, social media has helped in turning inbound marketing into an interactive experience for businesses and their respective audiences. For years, the relationship between a business and a consumer was pretty simple: you hear about a company, then you go to them. But, ever since these social networks began dominating the digital world, potential customers can now look for a company, follow them, and interact with them through different virtual channels. This proves to be a powerful method to raise brand awareness and increase customer engagement. You may also see twitter marketing.
5. Utilize Email Popups
Popups are extremely annoying and controversial — we’ll give you that. But as much as people despise them, they’re known to be a successful tool for inbound marketing; that is if you’re smart enough to entice visitors to be a part of your email list. You may also see social marketing.
An email list has been one of the most important factors in building a business for many years. This helps the business connect with prospects through compelling subject lines and newsletters. For some reason, a number of people still find these popup subscriptions incredibly useful for gaining information on certain matters. You may also see mass marketing.
Inbound Marketing VS Outbound Marketing
Why is inbound marketing better than outbound marketing? This is a question often asked by business owners and marketers alike.
You see, in the past, businesses worked to push their offered products or services on prospects. This form of traditional marketing puts a heavy weight on marketers, where email blasts, banner ads, event sponsorships, and spam were a sought-after tactic for brands to build awareness. However, the loud and obnoxious nature of outbound marketing has also become a subject of controversy in the world of business. It’s a tough call, to begin with, considering how annoying your customers may feel can take a toll on your brand’s image. You may also see instagram marketing.
With inbound marketing, however, the approach centers on inviting customers to your business through permission-based marketing. What makes this new marketing approach different from the conventional method is how marketers focus their attention on internal content. So, instead of forcing customers to come to you, you must create your own set of content marketing strategies to entice prospects. Thanks to the advancement of technology and the magic of the internet, businesses can choose from a variety of digital marketing and social media marketing platforms to carry out their campaigns.
There are many ways to use inbound marketing for the growth and development of your business. These techniques can help a business prosper by attracting and engaging prospects to generate better sales. And, given how the digital revolution has brought a number of modern marketing approaches to the table, inbound marketing has allowed companies to promote their products and services efficiently and effectively through various channels. But don’t just take our word for it, a good marketing plan would be nothing without proper execution.
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