What is the meaning of inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is a marketing method designed to attract visitors and potential customers, rather than externally leading a brand, product, or service in the hope of lead generation or customers.
In the context of digital marketing, this means using a combination of marketing channels to attract people's attention - the most common being content marketing, search engine optimization SEO and social media - in creative ways. A successful inbound marketing campaign aims to increase and drive quality traffic, engagement and conversions using 'earned' and 'owned media'.
In 2006, the inbound marketing software provider HubSpot opted for the phrase 'inbound marketing'. HubSpot defines inbound marketing as the process of attracting, converting, closing, and pleasing customers. Through using different types of content at different stages of the buying cycle, the 'inbound methodology' is "the best way to convert strangers to the promoters and customers of your business."
Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing
The clue to understand the difference between inbound and outbound marketing is in the name. Inbound marketing focuses on attracting potential customers, while outbound marketing is externally advancing a business offering. Inbound marketing is noticeable earnings, while outbound usually involves buying it.
Inbound Marketing: Proprietary and Earned Media
Inbound marketing uses proprietary and earned media to engage potential customers in creative ways.
Proprietary media are channels that have control over the business. For example, your website, blog, brand social media profile, product landing page and YouTube channel. You choose what to publish, how to publish, and when.
Earned media is the coverage that you earn as a result of your hard work. Offline, it includes traditional coverage in newspapers and magazines. Online, it often gets things like coverage on news sites via digital PR, but also on social media, mentioning the use of a campaign hashtag, conversations in online forums and online reviews. You have less control over earned media, but it should be a reward for the work that you put into your inbound marketing campaign.
Outbound Marketing: Paid Media
On the other hand, outbound marketing is more easily associated with paid media. This can be traditional offline advertising, PPC and display advertising, or paid email.
Paid media also incorporates social media advertising, for example Facebook ads or Twitter promoted posts.
Although commonly associated with outbound marketing, it is worth noting that social media advertising is often an effective way to boost the performance of inbound marketing campaigns. For example, advertising on Facebook allows you to promote your content and campaign to your target audience, no matter how great.
Benefits of Inbound Marketing
Reach the right audience in the right place to drive quality traffic
By focusing your inbound marketing strategy on reaching the right audiences in the right places, you can engage your target customers to achieve your digital marketing goals. This is in lieu of spending money on attracting traffic of people who are unlikely to ever convert.
Increase confidence
Inbound marketing is about giving potential customers the information they are looking for, even if they don't know it, in a creative and engaging way. It's not about driving unwanted sales at every opportunity. By using inbound marketing as a way to present your brand as a useful and trustworthy resource, the hope is that they will come to you when it's time to buy.
Protect yourself from over-reliance on one channel
By looking for quality traffic from a variety of sources (organic search, social media referrals, referrals from other websites talking about their amazing work), you reduce the reliance on a single channel and therefore the associated risk.
Considerations
Measurement
Measuring the impact of inbound marketing in a way that demonstrates an understandable ROI has always been tricky. The key is to be clear from the start.
You may not be able to track the number of leads generated as a direct result of your campaign, but you can track how many downloads your resource has had, the average length of people who viewed your video, how many new social media followers you have gained, etc.
When planning your campaign, be clear about what it is you are trying to achieve and measure that properly and honestly. That way, everyone's expectations are set, and therefore more likely to be met.
Long term strategy
Successful inbound marketing campaigns don't happen overnight. It takes time to plan, implement, and refine. It can also be labor intensive - you may need content creators, designers, developers, outreach specialists, social media marketers, and a campaign manager to even get it off the ground. That said, if you put your time and effort into the right evergreen campaign, you should have something that will continue to deliver value for the foreseeable future.
Examples of Inbound Marketing
Content centers offering how-to video guides, blogs, case studies, webinars, white papers, and related product information
User-generated content and social media marketing campaigns, such as photo contests or collecting reviews.
Interactive online content pieces created in partnership with related companies to increase digital PR and promotional opportunities
Create quality content for your target audience through blogging on your company blog
The importance of analysis and refinement
If there's one thing you remember about inbound marketing, it's the importance of tracking performance and refining your approach accordingly. This is where testing also comes in: find out what messages, types of valuable content, images, calls to action, etc. they work best for your target audience and be sure to implement them permanently or in your next campaign.
The inbound methodology can be applied in three ways:
Attract: Attract the right people with valuable content and conversations that establish you as a trusted advisor they want to engage with.
Engage - Present information and solutions that align with your pain points and goals to make them more likely to buy from you.
Delight: provide help and support to empower your customers to be successful in their purchase.
What do you know about flywheel?
Fly-wheel is a business model which can gain momentum by prioritizing your organization and providing an environmental safety experience .
Main characteristics of Inbound Marketing:
- Define the buyer: The content of the brand, the perfect timing, the advertising campaigns will revolve around the customer, their needs.
- Understand the customer journey and purchase cycles - establish your lead's main phases and their main points of contact.
- Establish your potential customer.
- Build customer loyalty: it is more expensive to attract new customers, it is recommended to keep the ones you already have
- Use CRM
- Content management
SEO (Search engine optimization)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of using search engine best practices to improve the visibility of a website or web page by ranking higher in search engine results ("SERPS") for keywords relevant to that particular website or web page. There are several ways to improve a website or the visibility of a web page: