By reading ReputationUP Coach’s new guide on inbound marketing, you will find out what it is, how it works, and learn its five fundamentals.
What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is a strategy that is used for customer acquisition.
The process is personalized according to the user’s needs by creating valuable content.
The goal of this type of marketing is to build long-lasting relationships between the company and its customers.
Here are three strategic stages to achieve this objective:
- Attraction: attracting prospects through quality content and conversations that establish the company as a reference on the topic.
- Engagement: providing the customer with solutions and data for their needs.
Engagement helps increase interactions and sell a company’s products or services.
- Delight: the company offers tools to users, so they can find success with their purchases.
In this article, we will go through the three steps and the overall methodology.
Inbound marketing and outbound marketing
Inbound marketing seeks professional and quality content aimed at creating and maintaining a long-term relationship with the client.
Instead, outbound marketing is a more traditional method used to capture attention through advertising, public relations, and promotion.
Is inbound marketing the same as SEO?
No, inbound marketing is a method that seeks to attract customers.
SEO is a process of inbound marketing that consists of improving content and search engine positioning.
How does inbound marketing work?
As previously mentioned, inbound marketing consists of attracting, engaging, and delighting.
We can see in detail each stage.
Attraction
The first step in the sales process of a company is to attract prospects.
It should start with copywriting and content publishing on the company’s blog and social media.
To improve inbound marketing, you can implement an SEO positioning strategy by associating keywords to the company’s products.
Thus, every time users do keyword research on a search engine, they will find the content related to your company more easily.
The attraction stage is not about increasing traffic to your website but capturing users who are most likely to become leads, and, ultimately, satisfied customers.
Engagement
Engaging means establishing a long-term relationship with clients.
Consumers are constantly evaluating businesses and what they offer over time.
Customers give more value to brands that pay attention to solutions rather than sales.
Inbound marketing puts the focus on solving problems instead of waiting for a purchase.
Delight
The delight strategy is about customer satisfaction and happiness after purchasing.
At this stage, the company’s customer support to the client is crucial.
For example, chatbots are conversation marketing tools that allow customers to get help at any time.
Surveys, on the other hand, can tell what customers think about a company.
Interactions on social media are also vital in this phase.
Users sometimes post comments about their experience with the brand.
It is important that businesses respond to each review and thank the customer for their feedback.
Since internalization of this know-how is not easy, as it is not easy to put it into practice, ReputationUP Coach helps companies to manage and improve their online reputation.
What are the five fundamentals of inbound marketing?
The five fundamentals of inbound marketing are contacts, buyer personas, buyer’s journey, content, and goals.
Contacts
A contact is a person who isn’t merely a buyer. It might be someone who is connected to the company, such as a customer, a partner, or an employee of the organization.
Thus, the company must maintain track of all of its contacts – particularly those who are likely to become customers – by using the marketing funnel.
Buyer personas
The buyer persona is the representation of your ideal client. It is based on real data and characteristics, on the type of user who could visit the company’s website or be interested in purchasing a product.
Bounce rates, conversion rates, online or mobile traffic, and other metrics are used to collect data.
As a result, the organization can succeed in making decisions and meeting the needs of its customers.
Buyer’s journey
Businesses guide purchasers in all three stages of their journey: awareness, consideration, and decision.
The inbound marketing strategy is tailored to each stage, so that the client may get support during the buying and selling process to face any issues that may arise.
Content
The quality content mentioned earlier in this article is essential for connecting the organization with its customers.
Text formats are specific to the company and are suited to its needs.
Content, tone, and target audience are all determined by the organization.
Search engine positioning through keywords determines how relevant your content is.
Objectives
Setting objectives is an essential component of any marketing strategy.
The team begins to operate once the goals have been established.
Inbound marketing, in particular, seeks to establish a trustworthy, long-term relationship between a firm and its customers.
After the objectives have been defined, the organization can evaluate how the strategy is being implemented and what aspects need to be changed or improved.
Thus, you’ll be able to see what content or other strategy is effective for the company’s sales.
Inbound marketing examples
We will see some companies in the following section which have implemented an inbound marketing strategy.
Maybelline
Publishing content can be done through posting articles on a blog.
However, more dynamic formats can draw consumers’ attention.
This is the case with Maybelline which uses tutorial videos to teach the audience some beauty tips and learn how to use makeup products.
Its Tips & Trends section is aimed at cosmetics and makeup amateurs rather than experts.
Iberia
Iberia’s blog Love to fly puts the selling and promotion of its services aside, to provide readers with unique experiences and destinations.
Iberia is an example of inbound marketing since users express an interest in people who enjoy flying.
The target of the company’s publications is to satisfy the curiosity of travelers.
High-quality videos and photos round out the article.
Spotify
Spotify is a platform that uses effective inbound marketing strategies, through email marketing.
Subscribers highly appreciate the personalization of their emails.
This unique content is created specifically on your musical preferences.
It also alerts users to upcoming musical debuts, always according to the user’s tastes.
Brand trust is growing and the audience appreciates the platform’s treatment and attention.
Is inbound marketing important?
Inbound marketing is important because it helps companies in attracting clients.
The organization can build long-term trust and commitment using this strategy.
Inbound marketing technology is gaining ground from the traditional field.
Companies’ first option is the use of social media rather than the written press or television advertising.
Furthermore, inbound marketing offers longer-lasting content (infographics, guides, etc.). The traditional method, on the other hand, is shorter and colder.
Let’s look at the following data on inbound marketing advertising costs:
- In the United States, businesses spent $27 billion on social media advertising, in 2018.
- In 2019, advertising spending on mobile devices was $190 billion, with a projection of 9.9% in 2022.
- Between 2020 and 2024, video advertising spending is expected to grow at a rate of 4.9% each year.
Does inbound marketing really work?
Inbound marketing is a profitable strategy that is accessible to even small and medium-sized businesses.
A company can also choose to combine inbound marketing and outbound marketing.
Namely, it is a two-pronged strategy that combines inbound marketing, promotions, and traditional advertising.
Outbound marketing, on the other hand, may be more expensive for small or medium businesses due to the cost of billboards, for instance.
Conclusions
Through this article, we have learned how inbound marketing works and described its five fundamentals.
From this guide, we can draw the following conclusions:
- Inbound marketing is a strategy for attracting customers.
- The process is tailored for each user through the creation of quality content.
- Outbound marketing uses more traditional formats, such as billboards.
- The phases of inbound marketing are attraction, engagement, and delight.
- The five fundamentals of inbound marketing are contacts, buyer personas, buyer’s journey, content, and goals.
ReputationUP Coach trains companies in all areas of marketing so that teams can manage their business reputation.