What Is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing refers to a way to attract potential customers in which you create content that is useful, interesting for them and distribute it in various ways. In other words, with inbound marketing, you don’t “stick” users and try to get them to buy your products or services, but, on the contrary, they themselves come to your site (page, social network group, etc.), because they are interested in the developed you educational content.

In English, inbound marketing is referred to as "Inbound Marketing". The term was coined by Brian Halligan in 2005. Halligan is one of the founders and leaders of the successful marketing platform "HubSpot", which offers companies effective tools for lead generation.

Reflecting on the topic of promoting companies on the Internet and offline, Brian, back in the early 2000s, urged his readers to rethink marketing, to look at it from a different angle. He criticizes the traditional and boring types of advertising: mailing lists, cold phone calls, advertising in newspapers, magazines, radio and television, distribution of flyers and leaflets, placement of advertising images on banners in the city and on the highways. This whole set of activities Halligan calls outbound marketing, and contrasts it with inbound as much more effective.

Basic concept of inbound marketing

In his writings, Brian Halligan identifies three main steps that include inbound marketing:

• Attract visitors to the target resource.
• Turn visitors into users.
• Analyze the work done and the result.

If we slightly expand this algorithm, then we can get a sequence of five steps:

• Drive traffic to your landing page.
• Turn a visitor into a lead.
• Convert the resulting lead into a real buyer.
• Turn a one-time customer into a regular customer who will often return to your site, make expensive purchases and bring you maximum profit.
• Do not forget to regularly analyze your work and adjust it to achieve your goals.

According to the author of the term "inbound marketing", this type of advertising is good because it can be used by representatives of small and medium-sized businesses that do not have a lot of financial resources for an advertising campaign.

Another invariable attribute of Inbound Marketing is its modernity and relevance. People are fed up with traditional advertising. To get their attention, you need something worthwhile and interesting. Therefore, it is not uncommon for large corporations to waste a lot of money by launching standard advertising campaigns.

So, for example, statistics from Gallup Media show that about 86% of viewers switch to another channel as soon as they see an ad. And 44% of users subscribed to various mailing lists have never opened promotional emails. That is, these outdated methods cost companies quite large amounts, but they give a minimum conversion.

Types of content for inbound marketing

There are a lot of varieties of content, and over time, it is likely that more will appear. Another seasoned marketer, Michael Stelzner, came up with his own content structure that can be used in inbound marketing.

He singled out, firstly, content for entertainment:

• competitions;
• games;
• quizzes;
• viral marketing;
• branded video.

He also took into account content designed to inspire users:

• reviews;
• posts on public forums;
• celebrity support.

The following is training content:

• press releases;
• infographics;
• usage trend reports;
• guides and instructions.

And the fourth group of content types is materials for persuasion:

• webinars;
• calculations;
• case studies;
• checklist;
• interactive demonstrations;
• product features;
• specification and price guide.

Somewhere on the periphery between entertainment and inspiration is such a type of content as widgets. Training with persuasion combines electronic news, reports and demo videos. Persuasion and inspiration are connected by ratings and information about various events. And entertainment and training are united by e-books and articles. At the same time, Michael Stelzner considers electronic news to be a kind of content that embodies all four tasks.

Advantages of the method

So, we can distinguish the following advantages of this type of advertising:

1. Profitability. As already noted, Inbound Marketing is significantly cheaper than, for example, filming a television commercial.
2. High degree of targeting. Inbound marketing brings you users who are interested in your content. Accordingly, they, with a high degree of probability, will be interested in your products or services. That is, you address only those people who can really become your customers.
3. Working with a narrow audience. You can create content with all the features of your target audience in mind, increasing the chances that you will be noticed.
4. Long-term content. High-quality material will attract new visitors and improve the image of the company for a long time, even if you reduce advertising costs. No other form of advertising can boast of this.
5. Increasing brand awareness. When developing content, you can use branded "chips" that will later become part of your style and will be recognized by a wide range of users.

It is worth noting such an advantage as the lack of pressure on a potential client. You will provide users with interesting videos, news, articles, reviews - and they will turn to you of their own free will, remaining loyal to your products and services. Providing useful and interesting content for free will create a desire among visitors to provide you with a return service - perhaps by making a purchase. At the same time, the buyer will not feel that this decision is being imposed on him, since he will make it on his own.

Key principles

Good inbound marketing is always implemented with the following principles in mind:

• Keeping a blog that helps draw attention to the target resource.
• The use of social networks to promote goods or services.
• Leverage the power of SEO and SEM marketing.
• Maintaining podcasts, RSS feeds, eBooks publications, etc.
• Use of numerous free tools that promote promotion on the Internet (like Content Experiments or Google Analytics).

Following these principles has long proven its effectiveness in practice. For example, businesses that use blogs and social media to promote typically have 50% more visitors than the industry average. At the same time, an advertising campaign based on the inbound marketing algorithm costs only 60% of the amount that a similar traditional campaign would cost.

Mike Volp, a colleague and friend of Brian Halligan's, calls the ratio of inbound marketing to outbound marketing a bit of a good brain against a needlessly inflated budget. It is difficult to disagree with this statement in an environment where the most valuable and effective tool for lead generation is high-quality content (of course, in conjunction with optimization).

Five Inbound Marketing Techniques to Increase Customer Loyalty

We'll focus on the last step and look at five different customer retention methods.

Customer Relationship Management

As we mentioned in one of our last blog articles, The importance of trusting your customer in a digital world , CRM, customer relationship management ( Customer Relationship Management ), is a type of 360o management that includes a set of practices, business strategies and technology focused on customer relationships .

It mainly concerns storing information of customers, both existing and potential, about their activities in the company, phone calls and all types of interaction with them.

We don't mean a simple contact list, this goes further as it collects a range of very important data through which the teams in charge of customer service can be prepared and updated with personal information, their history and purchasing preferences.

Networks

Social media is one of the biggest loudspeakers a brand can use to express themselves today. It is very important to have one of the most common social networks that generate the most traffic, such as Instagram or Facebook.

One of the main factors against any social network is communication with customers. The brand receives the opinion of users about the products, whether it be complaints, constructive criticism, doubts, etc. This is a very important element, as the brand will always be able to know what users think and what they need. This is why the better the customer service, the better the reviews from them.

Serving your audience in an educated and transparent way is very important. Listening to their complaints, resolving doubts, helping them with whatever they need will make users feel comfortable and help with the Loyalty process .

In addition, social media is one of the best channels for spreading your products or services as well as making the public aware of them.

Mailing

Email marketing is another strength of inbound marketing . This is one way to offer your audience an exclusive deal.

You can email brand information, new product launches, exclusive offers, news, and more, always in a personalized way. This will cause an increase in customer confidence .

You must make each customer feel unique, for example by sending out premium offers, invitations to events, birthday greetings, birthday gifts, discount coupons, etc.

It is very important to keep in touch with your clients and to be present in their everyday life, to carry out a weekly mailing list, on some of the topics that we mentioned earlier. Always clearly represent the interests of each client and write emails in a personalized way.

Webinars

Una webinar This is a web-based seminar where an expert explains a topic to subscribed users. For example, if your brand is cosmetics for aesthetic procedures, the expert will give free webinar on beauty treatments techniques you sell products from.

As soon as this type of course is completed, your clients, in addition to learning and deepening the topic of interest to them, will increase their Loyalty to you. Because you, as a brand, provide added value.

In addition, thanks to webinars, you will not only increase customer loyalty, but also become a good channel for training and offering your products or services to users participating in the seminar.

Satisfaction Surveys

Running a satisfaction survey is one of the best ways to find out how your customers perceive and what they think of your product or service.

This inbound marketing method will allow you to evaluate various metrics that will help you make the changes you feel are necessary, such as product, customer service, etc.

It's best to keep the survey light and short so that you don't have to spend a lot of time filling it out, otherwise the client will get tired and not complete it.

And don't forget to approach it in a way that you can measure Loyalty , find out what they think of what you're selling and how happy they are with it.