Inbound marketing is a marketing style that emphasises the value of content production in attracting customers and moving them through your sales funnel. Essentially, it entails cultivating consumer relationships through relevant social network posts, email campaigns, or mobile-friendly advertisements.
A strong inbound marketing plan will include excellent material such as eBooks, case studies, webinars, or email campaigns that are relevant to the requirements and interests of the consumers. Expect increased sign-ups and repeat purchases if you can present your company as a beneficial resource.
Outbound marketing content has a shorter lifespan than inbound marketing content such as instructional guides, infographics, case studies, or ebooks. To keep your material relevant and timely, you can boost its usability by updating and republishing it.
Traditional marketing approaches, on the other hand, are brief and to the point. In exchange for a few sales, a salesperson can spend hours cold emailing and contacting new leads. However, there is no assurance that you will be able to create trust and significant long-term relationships in this manner; instead, it is more of a numbers game.
In the near future, more consumers will use social media to discover and follow brands that correspond with their values and interests. Because of these factors, it is a perfect channel for attracting new clients and maintaining relevance with existing customers.
Customers are divided on the type of social media material they want: 91 percent prefer brands that remain honest on social media. Customers expect films and behind-the-scenes glimpses that highlight the brand's values and purpose, in addition to attractive product photographs.
The inbound technique is a strategy for expanding your business by cultivating meaningful, long-term relationships with consumers, prospects, and customers. It is about appreciating and empowering these people to achieve their objectives at any stage of their journey with you.
When clients achieve success and share it with others, it attracts more prospects to your firm, resulting in a self-sustaining loop. This is how your business gains traction, and it is for this reason that the inbound methodology serves as a solid basis for your flywheel.
When your flywheel is built on the inbound paradigm, your marketing, sales, and service functions may add force and reduce friction across the attract, engage, and delight phases. Every organisational function is also in charge of eliminating friction from your flywheel.
In the attract phase, for example, marketing will most likely play the most important role by doing things like blogging, event marketing, and running paid ads, but your sales team can also add force by engaging in social selling, and your customer service team can add force by making it easier for current customers to refer others.
Optimize all of this content using an SEO plan to attract your audience members on a deeper level through inbound marketing. An SEO plan would necessitate the targeting of specific keywords and phrases connected to your products or services, the problems you answer for clients, and the ways you assist target audience members.
This will help your material and information to appear naturally on search engine results pages (SERPs) for individuals who are looking for it — also known as your target audience or the proper customers for your business.
When employing inbound techniques to engage your audience, make sure you communicate and interact with prospects and customers in a way that encourages them to create long-term relationships with you. When employing these engagement tactics, include information regarding the value your company will bring them.
How you handle and manage inbound sales calls is one example of a specific engagement strategy. Pay attention to how customer service employees handle calls from potential customers and customers who are interested. Also, make sure you're always offering solutions rather than products. This ensures that all transactions result in mutually advantageous agreements for both clients and your company – in other words, you deliver value to your right-fit customers.
When it comes to delighting customers, another important strategy is social media listening. Followers of your social media pages may use one of your profiles to express feedback, ask questions, or share their experience with your products or services. Respond to these encounters with information that assists, supports, and encourages followers – this demonstrates that you are listening to and caring about them.
Finally, an inbound strategy focused on delighting customers is one that assists and supports customers in any situation, regardless of whether or not your business benefits from it. Remember that a happy customer becomes a brand champion and booster, so manage all encounters, large and little, with care.