Inbound marketing is a digital marketing methodology that focuses on creating valuable, educational, and useful content to attract and retain customers, rather than trying to reach them through invasive advertising and spam. To understand what inbound marketing is, it is essential to explain the theory on which this strategy is based.
By providing interesting and useful content to our potential customers, they will come to find us and contact us, eventually becoming loyal customers and promoters of our brand.
This methodology is different from outbound marketing techniques, which use invasive approaches such as television advertising, telemarketing, spam, and banner advertising, and tend to interrupt the user experience. Inbound marketing focuses on creating content that is educational, useful, and interesting and attracts the attention of the public in a natural and non-invasive way.
What is inbound marketing and how does it work?
The inbound marketing process is based on four main stages: attract, convert, close and retain.
The first phase, attraction, focuses on the creation of useful and interesting content for the target audience; the goal is to draw the public to the company's website.
This content can be articles, guides, videos, podcasts, or infographics. It is crucial that they are always relevant and useful for the target audience.
To attract the right audience, you need to know the target and create content that responds to their needs and problems. The use of the correct keywords and an effective SEO strategy can help position your content optimally in search results. In this way it will be easier to be found by users when they are looking for information on topics that interest them.
The attraction phase of inbound marketing can be accomplished through a variety of channels, including blogging, social media content posting, video creation, and pay per click (PPC) advertising.
The second stage is conversion, and focuses on acquiring valuable information about your visitors, such as their name, email address, and shopping preferences.
To increase the chances of conversion, an effective tool is the creation of lead magnets, i.e. the free offer of content and tools that help users become contacts and potential customers. For example, a lead magnet can be an e-book, a checklist, a webinar, a free consultation, or any other resource useful to your target audience. A good lead magnet should be high quality and relevant to your potential customers' interests.
Personalized offers are essential in this phase of inbound marketing to convince users to access your landing page, which is a web page created specifically to convert visitors into contacts. The landing page is therefore the place where the user gives their information, in exchange for content that responds to specific needs. The more data you can collect, the more it will be possible to engage consumers with content that is suitable for them.
The third phase of the inbound marketing process is closure and focuses on transforming the contacts obtained into customers. However, not all people will be immediately available to purchase upon conversion. They may be ready to buy even weeks or months later.
The goal at this stage is not only to sell, but also to establish a relationship with users that allows them to feel recognized by continuing to demonstrate that they deserve trust, thanks to the offer of valuable content.
Finally, the last phase, is loyalty, and focuses on the creation of a long-term relationship with one's customers, the sharing of information, as well as new valuable content, and the after-sales service.
In this way it is probable that customers not only continue to purchase the products offered, but also that the latter, through word of mouth, bring new customers, hence becoming promoters of the company.
Inbound marketing is an effective methodology for reaching the right audience, providing useful and interesting content that attracts attention and builds a relationship of trust with contacts and customers.
Now that we have explained what inbound marketing is and the stages involved, let's look at putting the strategy into practice. For each of the four stages, the internet provides multiple tools that are crucial for a successful strategy. Let's see some of them:
The creation of high-quality content is essential in the attraction phase, as the public expects to receive relevant information on the topics that they are interested in. Blogging is effective for achieving this, as it allows articles of varying length to be published on specific topics.
Blogging is one of the best tools to have, it can influence people's perception of the company and to establish trust, while at the same time it moves away from the role of the salesperson and presenting instead as a thought leader.
One of the secrets that often lies behind a successful inbound marketing strategy is to conduct a good SEO, gaining visibility and being well positioned within search engines.
This tool provides for a precise analytical phase of the Google algorithms and is the most used search engine. By identifying the right keywords with which users search for, these can be included in the copy on the website and Google should identify them. In this way the attraction phase will reach a higher level of efficiency.
Equally, with the use of good SEO, social media is very important to be present on the main social network platforms where users today spend most of their time.
Based on two-way communication, social networks allow you to interact with new and potential customers and display your products or services.
Email marketing is an essential tool in the conversion and retention stages of an inbound marketing strategy.
In the conversion stage, email marketing is used to gain the trust of potential customers by sending personalized and relevant content based on their interests and online behavior. This is where the marketing automation strategy comes into play. The use of automated tools that allow you to manage the relationship with your contacts, sending them personalized content and targeted commercial offers, right up to the close of sale.
In the retention stage, however, email marketing is used to continue interacting with those who have already purchased, by sending useful content, such as the latest blog article, a new e-book to download, or to promote events and special offers, presenting new products that may be of interest to them.
A call-to-action is a phrase or clickable button that encourages a visitor to take a specific action, such as downloading an eBook or registering for a webinar. CTAs are an effective way to convert visitors into leads and guide them through your inbound marketing funnel.
CRM is the management of relationships with both current and potential customers. CRM software analyzes data on contacts and customers and consequently allows you to improve relationships with them, therefore increasing sales. The goal is to always meet the needs of users, to increase the number of loyal customers.
Now that you know more about what inbound marketing is, why not try putting the strategy into practice?
Ekeria, Digital Agency, is by your side to support you in implementing your online presence. Contact us for a free consultation.