Inbound marketing is a form of digital marketing that uses content to drive qualified traffic to your website. It does this by providing what people are looking for, what they need, and what they want. Inbound marketing focuses on creating high-quality content that solves the problems of your target market – not just what you have or what you do.
If you’ve heard the terms inbound marketing or inbound sales, what they are talking about is all part of what we call inbound. And whether you’re using content to attract new customers through blogging and social media, driving leads with eBooks and whitepapers, organizing webinars for market education – or any combination thereof – what’s important is that you’re taking a strategic, planned, and deliberate inbound marketing approach.
Let’s dive deeper into inbound marketing and start by discussing first the inbound methodology.
What is the Inbound Methodology?
The inbound methodology is a process that uses content and digital marketing to attract, convert, close, and delight customers. It’s all about attracting people to your content through different channels and converting them into leads.
There are exactly three ways to apply the inbound methodology, which are stated below:
- Attract: Attracting your ideal customers to what you have or what you do is the first step. You can use different types of online channels like blogging, social media engagement, and video marketing. Through these channels, people get attracted by what they see on their screens which encourages them to go further down the sales funnel.
- Engage: Once you’ve managed to attract your target market, the next step is to engage them. This can be done by providing valuable content that meets their needs and interests, that targets their pain points. You must produce high-quality content consistently in order for this to work.
- Delight: The last step is to delight your customers. Once you’ve managed to engage them, continue providing valuable content and do whatever it takes to keep them happy. Make sure that they are getting what they need from you so that they wouldn’t want to go anywhere else. Provide support and help your customers succeed.
Now let’s move on to the different inbound marketing strategies which will help you achieve what the inbound methodology has laid out above.
Different Strategies for Inbound Marketing
There are different strategies that can be applied and help you achieve your goals. These are divided into attracting strategies, engaging strategies, and delighting strategies.
Attracting Strategies
Inbound marketing strategies that are tied to content creation and development, such as blogging or social media posts.
One way you can attract your target audience is by publishing helpful guides on how they might use the products themselves in order for it to be more personal than just reading from afar! If possible provide customer testimonials too—these will make people feel like their problems aren’t alone when using these types of sites (which usually leads them back into purchasing).
Let’s not forget that your content strategy should be optimized for search engines so that it appears on the SERPs and organically by your target audience.
Engaging Strategies
It’s important to make sure you are engaging your audience so that they want long-term relationships with the business. Engagement strategies include making communication and dealing with leads/customers in a way that makes them feel valued, providing information about what value will be provided for their needs or wants, etc…
Be sure to focus on Solution Selling when engaging with potential customers. This will ensure all deals end in mutually beneficial agreements for your business, and the customer is satisfied- meaning you provide value!
Delighting Strategies
Delight your customers by using thoughtful bots and surveys to assist them at every point in their journey. The best time for these messages is when you need feedback, or if there’s an issue with a service that needs addressing–especially right after purchase!
Chatbots and satisfaction surveys may be used to help current customers take advantage of new techniques or tactics you’ve started offering them. Additionally, chatbot-driven feedback tools can send out a survey six months after the customer purchases your product for an improvement idea review!
Diving into social media can be a little overwhelming, but it’s important. Social Media followers may use one of your profiles to provide feedback or ask questions about what you’re doing and share their experience with fellow consumers. Respond immediately by providing information that helps support those following you and encouraging them in return will make sure they feel special when interacting on these channels too.
Sounds easy, right? Well, unfortunately, many businesses seem to get it wrong! Contact us and we’ll help you get started.
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