Inbound marketing
What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is a methodology that focuses on attracting potential customers in a friendly way, providing value to their business.
To achieve this, it focuses on making it easy for them to find you online. By providing valuable and useful content for their processes, you can sell them products and services, and ultimately build loyalty.
In inbound marketing, you guide the customer from the moment they discover you until the sale is closed, and ultimately, you try to retain them as customers for as long as possible.
To achieve this, multiple techniques are used, mainly relying on content marketing, SEO optimization, SEM campaigns, email marketing, and social media.
All of this combined with advanced analytics, automation, and email marketing tools.
1. Phases or stages of inbound marketing
Like any methodology, inbound marketing consists of several phases, which are:
Attract
In this phase of inbound marketing, the company or service is positioned so that ideal customers find your content, drawing them to the products and services offered.
This is achieved through a solid content strategy, working on SEO, SEM campaigns, social media, and various commercial actions.
Convert
Once you’ve managed to drive traffic to your website, you need to try to convert those visitors into leads that join your company database with the goal of turning them into customers.
To do this, you can use resources like forms, chatbots, CTAs… They are usually paired with downloadable content or limited-time offers for better results.
Close
At this point, the focus should be on closing the sale, which involves properly executing strategies like email marketing to stay top-of-mind with the buyer persona and guide them through the sales funnel.
Personalizing and knowing the recipient of these actions is key to delivering more precise messages and achieving a conversion.
Delight
After the desired conversion, it’s time to build loyalty. You must continue working with the customer to set strategies that keep them buying your products, turn them into brand advocates, and create a long-term bond.
2. Advantages of inbound marketing
Inbound marketing is a methodology that brings several benefits to companies that implement it. Some of the most significant are:
- It improves your online presence, making it easier for potential customers to find you.
- It builds loyalty and creates long-term relationships, provided you can build trust, offer personalized attention, and add value to the customer’s business.
- It allows you to generate more leads, which directly translates into more sales opportunities and higher profitability.
- It creates customers who amplify your company’s reputation, allowing you to reach an even larger audience.
- It puts you top-of-mind in your industry; the resulting visibility ends up turning your product or service into a benchmark.
How to run a successful inbound marketing campaign?
To run a successful inbound marketing campaign, you need to execute all the previously mentioned stages.
However, within each stage, there’s a wide range of actions you can take.
While the possibilities are endless, let’s explore some of these actions below:
1) To attract
To attract users and turn them into potential customers, the first strategy should aim to spark interest in your company’s website.
To do this, you need to take a series of steps to improve your website’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This means you must aim to rank at the top of search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing.
But first, you also need to figure out who the ideal buyer is for your product and their main traits, as this will allow you to gather the info needed to offer a personalized service.
Based on this, you should create content like blogs, articles, posts, videos, and graphics that fit their need for information.
Techniques to improve SEO use various resources. These include using keywords, backlinks, managing social media, and technical details (like improving loading speed by optimizing certain elements).
The goal here is for the potential customer to reach the website, where their curiosity or interest turns them into a ‘lead‘.
2) To convert
Once the interaction happens, you need to leverage it to collect all the information that helps refine the customer profile and improve service quality.
Generally, at this stage, the interaction is initiated by the company, but sometimes potential customers can also reach out.
When a company has executed the previous phase correctly, consumers will feel encouraged to contact the business.
This is known as inbound telemarketing, since the user takes the initiative, making it a less intrusive method than conventional telemarketing.
Thanks to advances in new technologies, there are mass outbound calling software solutions that let us handle calls (and even instant messaging chats) from potential customers to offer them a personalized solution.
This gives us the chance to highlight our product’s features and smoothly transition to the next phase.
However, you must know exactly how to launch this campaign. If you want to learn more, you’ll find all the details in this guide.
3) To sell
Once the customer has all the necessary information and decides to buy, it’s crucial to guide them through the process.
To do this, you need to pay attention to certain details, like the communication channels you provide to your customers, as this will make the difference between a lost sale and a won one.
Choosing an omnichannel communication strategy that lets you talk to consumers regardless of the channel used (phone call, WhatsApp, video conference…) will help provide quality service, making it easier for customers to feel encouraged to buy and complete the process.
Integrating different communication channels into your telephony system will boost your omnichannel approach and help your inbound marketing campaign.
And if you add elements like a connection to the company’s CRM so that all customer information is centralized and you can offer personalized attention, success is guaranteed.
If you want to know more details about all the technology available to sell your products, you’ll find all the information at this link.
4) To build loyalty
This is the final phase of the cycle. At this point, the customer has purchased and satisfied the need for which they bought the product.
This is where you can use satisfaction surveys and follow up through post-sales service to ensure everything is fine.
This way, you’ll gain a brand-loyal customer who will become an advocate and attract new clients.
How to set up your inbound marketing strategy in 7 steps?
For the three previously described phases to work, you need to follow some preliminary steps. In other words, you need to plan.
Step 1. Define your customer
This is the foundation of inbound marketing: defining what type of customer you want to attract, as well as their needs and interests.
Otherwise, you’ll get visitors to your website who will never be interested in your product or service. Your conversion rates will be low, and the inbound cycle will never operate at full capacity.
Step 2. Define your marketing triggers
Trigger means a catalyst or spark. With marketing triggers, you’ll be able to find out what drives your customers to look for information.
In other words, this phase involves defining their problems and needs (their pain points) and finding the intersection between those issues and your product.
Step 3. Define your keywords
You know your customers. You know what leads them to search for information. Now it’s time to figure out how they search for it.
And yes, they search online. They type words into search engines, and those words (keywords) are the ones you need to know.
The goal is to achieve strong search engine rankings by creating engaging content for your potential customers.
Step 4. Define your goals
This is essential for measuring the return on investment (ROI) of your inbound strategy. You need to identify where you want to go and when.
Your goals must be SMART, an acronym for specific (specific), measurable (measurable), attainable (attainable), relevant (relevant), and timely (timely).
To define them, you can use metrics like the number of unique monthly visitors to your website or your monthly lead count.
Step 5. Define your content strategy
Content is king, as you’ve probably read and heard many times. But it’s king not just in the first phase (attraction), but in all of them.
That’s why you need to define a content strategy for each phase. This includes not just blog articles, but also webinars, ebooks, infographics, tutorials, videos, FAQ sections, and more.
Step 6. Define your lead nurturing strategy
Lead nurturing is a process that goes from attracting a visitor to converting them into a customer. It involves feeding your potential customer information so that their visit ends in a sale.
To properly define this process, you need to understand the concept of the conversion funnel in inbound marketing.
The conversion funnel consists of three parts: in the wide part of the funnel, potential customers (your website visitors) arrive with a general idea of what they are looking for.
Then the funnel narrows, and the middle concentrates on those potential customers who have an idea of what they want and are looking for a specific solution.
Finally, the funnel narrows into a third layer where customers know exactly what they want and are ready to buy.
Your content strategy must cater to these three funnel layers using different techniques. For example, using lead magnets—content like ebooks, guides, webinars, or templates that you offer potential customers in exchange for their details. And from there, you start nurturing your relationship with emails.
Step 7. Find the right inbound marketing tools
To implement your inbound marketing campaign, you’ll need various tools to cover all bases. We highlight the following:
- CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools to help you manage your leads
- SEO tools to optimize your content for search engines
- Email marketing tools to nurture your leads
- Web analytics tools to measure your strategy’s results
- Tools for SEM campaigns
There are many on the market, and some names will ring a bell (HubSpot, Semrush, Mailchimp, Google Analytics, etc.).
Inbound marketing vs. outbound marketing
Outbound marketing is also known as traditional marketing and refers to a more intrusive type of marketing based on paid ads (online and offline), cold calls, emails, and direct mail.
Its main advantage? The results are more immediate. Its downside: it’s more expensive.
You could dive deeper into the difference between the two types of marketing with this analogy: inbound is a marathon, and outbound is a sprint.
But has anyone ever seen a team stop competing in a marathon just to run a sprint?
Usually, a team competes in both. Well, it’s also normal for companies to combine both types of marketing into a single strategy.
In fact, some analysts have pointed out that the distinction between these two types of marketing doesn’t make sense.
Nowadays, there is a gray area where they converge: outbound has managed to exploit social media, and no inbound strategy, for instance, skips SEM (pay-per-click) or, as we’ll see later, other traditional methods like direct email.
Inbound marketing vs. content marketing
It’s common to confuse inbound marketing and content marketing. Many definitions of inbound lend themselves to this.
For example, this one from HubSpot, taken from a benchmark academic paper on Google Scholar that compiles several definitions:
‘Inbound marketing is a strategy for attracting customers with relevant information and useful content.’
If you’ve followed everything we’ve told you so far, this won’t surprise you: content marketing is the main pillar that inbound marketing relies on. But it’s not the only one.
As we’ve already pointed out, inbound is a holistic strategy that combines and integrates different marketing methods.
We’ll see this better below, when we talk about the phases of inbound marketing.
Examples of inbound marketing techniques
Many companies use inbound marketing. It’s a strategy just as useful for business-to-business (B2B) marketing as it is for direct-to-consumer (B2C) marketing.
Remember that inbound is a holistic method, so when looking for inspiration, don’t focus on isolated elements.
In its annual inbound marketing report (The State of Inbound Marketing Trends 2022), HubSpot highlights the latest trends. You can keep them in mind as examples for your campaigns:
- Influencer marketing
- Mobile marketing
- Short-form video marketing
- Virtual events
- Experiential marketing
Even so, the preferred inbound marketing actions are still social media, blogs, and sending emails.
Among their predictions, you can take note of the following: the rise of TikTok for B2B marketing and influencer marketing.
Examples of brands correctly applying inbound marketing
Attracting the ideal people through the right channels isn’t impossible, but it does require some inspiration to provide that unique value that will make your audience stick with your brand and not look elsewhere.
Therefore, below are examples of brands that have taken Inbound Marketing to another level with campaigns that allowed them to convert massive portions of their target audiences.
Pay attention to each of them and take note of what might work for your own strategy.
· Columbia
Yes, we’re talking about the institution; as a brand, they noticed that their leads or prospective students often felt confused about what career path to take, what their aspirations were, and what each major offered.
To help them make a decision, they created a specialized downloadable eBook on their website that covered every profession offered at the institution, along with a study on market opportunities for each professional.
By helping to resolve this doubt about their true calling, Columbia helped its students make an informed decision based on what they needed to know, while also increasing its conversion rate by 27%.
Ultimately, it boosted the number of leads or students interested in studying at this institution.
· Starbucks
The social media of this world-famous coffee chain appeals to its followers’ emotions by selling, rather than just coffee, a lifestyle where peace is found right after taking a sip of their product.
Additionally, part of their strategy relies on using user-generated content, tagging them, and featuring their photos on the brand’s timeline.
Another tactic that worked for them is writing consumers’ names on cups with positive messages; this encourages more content sharing on social media and turns the brand into a Lovemark.
They’ve managed to build an interactive community dedicated to enjoying life while having a coffee at Starbucks locations.
· GoPro
This well-known American company, which manufactures high-definition professional cameras, doesn’t have a YouTube channel dedicated solely to selling and showcasing the product.
What matters most about a camera is the resulting photos, and GoPro recognized that its audience consists of photography enthusiasts who admire each other’s work.
So this channel is packed with extreme sports videos and incredible landscapes shared by users of this professional camera, making others want to buy the product to achieve the same stunning results.
Furthermore, other people will want their video work featured on this channel to gain more exposure, making it very much a win-win.
· Spotify
This instant access to millions of songs via an online service features a personalized email marketing plan that has successfully won the loyalty of the platform’s users.
Before sending an email, Spotify makes sure to learn the user’s tastes and interests. Then, it sends a personalized message addressing them by name, sharing news about their favorite songs, bands, or singers.
The more personalized your newsletters are, offering users exactly what they need and want at that moment, the more successful your campaign will be.
· American Express
This company created a blog that acts as a forum called OPEN Forum, fostering an interactive community aimed at sharing essential content.
The personalized content gives this blog a unique touch, focusing heavily on tailored information designed to help SMBs succeed.
· Adidas
Adidas is a brand that needs no introduction, but it has been doing exceptionally well with its Inbound Marketing strategy.
In addition to offering a blog with all the info their Buyer Personas need about sports and similar topics, they also offer a workout app that acts as a personal coach anytime, anywhere.
Little by little, it has built an interactive community with shared sports interests, drawing even more people closer to the brand.
· Always
This brand knows how to talk to its audience in the most effective way because they know them perfectly.
Not only do they launch impactful campaigns on female empowerment, like ‘Like a girl’, but they also run a YouTube channel full of tips and advice for women during their menstrual cycle.
Furthermore, their website features a calculator so girls can track when their next cycle is due, along with other lifestyle content that proves incredibly useful in their daily lives.
· Coca Cola
From its traditional media ads, this brand has demonstrated its power to establish its brand positioning, ultimately winning the hearts of consumers.
They dropped the ‘Open Happiness’ slogan and replaced it with the now-famous ‘Taste the Feeling’ or ‘Siente el sabor’, featuring a song covered by Conrad Sewell.
With this, the company sought to highlight consumer insights, appealing to their emotions and making them recall moments shared with the refreshing drink.
Like Starbucks, they aim to sell a lifestyle and convey the brand’s commitment to its audiences.
· Home Depot
This famous home improvement brand is a clear example of content perfectly aligned with the brand.
On their YouTube channel, you can find ‘How to’ or ‘Cómo hacer’ tutorials, allowing people to learn how to do projects from the comfort of their own homes.
Additionally, their blog offers tips on topics like hosting a family BBQ, along with other content closely tied to the products they sell, instantly hooking their audience.
In conclusion, brands doing it right are those that know not only their audience’s demographics but also their habits and behaviors.
To conclude: the future of inbound marketing
Since its emergence just two decades ago, inbound marketing has proven to be an undeniably successful marketing strategy.
Its main secret: adapting marketing strategies to the way 21st-century consumers and businesses think and act.
To implement it, you need a long-term strategic vision that leverages the various information and consumption channels the internet offers.
Continuous technological innovation in the digital world promises a bright future. The key for your business? Taking advantage of and experimenting with new channels and digital formats.
One last tip? Use a highly powerful email marketing tool that lets you successfully nurture every phase of the inbound cycle, improve your conversions, and build customer loyalty.