The basic task of any marketer or business is to generate interest in their products and services. They spread the word through various marketing techniques. These techniques, though tried and tested, have become less effective over time as customers now want to avoid these interruptions. These businesses capture the attention of their customers through inbound marketing. There are many examples of “interference marketing” are not working nowadays. Cold callers are often blocked. Most people record TV shows only to avoid commercials. People on your email list will ignore and unsubscribe if you constantly try to sell them something. Most people find ads annoying enough to admit that they use Ad Blocker. Many believe that ad blocking improves their web browsing experience.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is the exact opposite of outbound marketing. It’s a modern marketing paradigm that’s reshaping our approach to lead generation and customer relationships. It uses content marketing to attract leads and customers, improve customer relationships, and then convert those customers into business advocates.
It represents the modern proactive buyer who uses the power of the Internet to inform their purchasing decisions. With inbound marketing you create relevant and valuable content and make it discoverable for these types of customers.
How Inbound marketing works?
An inbound marketing strategy organizes the customer journey into a few key inbound marketing stages they are Attract, Convert, Close and Delight. With inbound marketing, cold calling or interruption marketing is not focused on getting leads like any other. Instead, it uses blogs, social media and other channels to attract and qualify highly focused and relevant content. A key part of a modern inbound marketing system is consistently delighting the customer through effective after sales service. The key to great customer service is identifying and solving the problem and getting out of their way as soon as possible. Using a customer’s existing problems to sell them something more is a pushy selling technique that undermines the trust you’ve built through content marketing.
Attract
The first step is to create awareness and attract the right kind of customer. This is where audience and market research is essential. You need to narrow down the demographic that is most likely to become your customer. If your product or service is aimed at business professionals, all of your marketing materials should be created with that buyer in mind. Let’s talk a little more about buyer personas in the article. You create lead generation opportunities by crafting high-quality, remarkable content. You should aim to answer a question or solve any problem that your target demographic may struggle with. Content should not only attract potential customers, but also motivate them towards the next step in the process.
Convert
Once you start attracting prospects, you need to nurture them towards buying. In inbound marketing, these are commonly described as converting leads. The first step in supporting a lead is usually inbound calls. Until this point in your inbound marketing strategy you’ve given everything free. Attractive social media posts, interesting blogs etc. Now you have people’s attention, so you can ask for something in return. To get access to your best content, people need to share some details about their interests, career or contact details. The most important inbound marketing tool at your disposal is having an effective form. Your form should include content they want, but also feel they need. By tracking your leads’ website activity and social media engagement, you’ll know which ones are ready to convert into customers.
Engage
Now that you’ve got their contact information and added them to a list, you can move on to the next step in the lead nurturing process. Use social media and email marketing to engage new prospects by sending relevant content and updates and other items they might be interested in. You can increase lead engagement by involving them in this part of your marketing ask for feedback, conduct surveys etc.
Delight
The business-lead relationship does not cool after becoming a paying customer or making a purchase. Your goal is to build brand loyalty. You can do this by interacting with them on social media, offering them incentives if they promote your brand, and sending them relevant content that can help them. It’s a flywheel effect where a happy customer brings in new leads and helps build your brand over time.
Conclusion
Every inbound marketing can be different from each other. It consists of many techniques, and each of those techniques must be implemented to its full potential for a campaign with high conversion rates. So, when this conversion rate doesn’t meet your expectations, don’t lose hope. Find out which campaign techniques work best and try to implement them. Even if you don’t run that campaign again, the lessons you get from such analysis will give you confidence in running your future inbound marketing campaigns.