There are multiple marketing techniques that companies adopt to garner attention. Inbound marketing is one such technique that has been quite beneficial for businesses. With inbound marketing, organizations make customers discover them rather than the other way around.
This is an interesting way to grab the attention and stay visible to the customers. Companies usually curate content that can help their target audience in various ways. This way, they will garner their attention which will eventually help in attracting them to the brand.
Whilst outbound marketing is a good technique, it can be too nosy and irritate the customers. However, if the brands start focusing on attracting customers via some other strategies, it will surely leave a positive impact on them.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Let us get our basics first and understand what inbound marketing is. Inbound marketing is a technique which is completely opposite to the outbound or interruption marketing. It redesigns the brand’s approach towards customer and Lead generation. In inbound strategy, the companies use content marketing to garner the attention of their customers.
It is imperative that the modern buyers are using the internet to make their purchase decisions and this is where inbound marketing is going to aid them and the brand at the same time. In inbound marketing, brands use relevant and informative content to get the attention of customers.
The brands of course use different techniques to make this possible. Inbound marketing is all about timing. The brands should be ready to put right content in front of the right audience at the right time and garner their attention.
The ultimate goal is to transfer a lead into a customer.
Inbound Marketing Vs. Outbound Marketing- The Difference
Now, it is time to understand the difference between these inbound and outbound marketing techniques.
Outbound marketing is also called as interruption marketing because it affects a customer and drags their attention. For example, cold calling a customer and talking about your product or service. Email marketing will also come under the outbound marketing technique only as it is initiated by the brand and they are reaching out to the customer. This outbound marketing can leave a negative impact on the customer as it will impact their everyday routine.
Then comes the inbound marketing. This is a subtle way of promoting your brand and will come create a positive impact on the customer too. Let us take an example of a travel company named ABC, they have created multiple blogs related to travel itinerary for some of the most popular places across the world and optimised it too.
A guy who has planned a trip to Paris wanted to know some itinerary suggestions and best places to visit. Once he searches for these places, multiple blogs will pop up but our ABC’s blog will be present on top of the search engine.
This will help in attracting that customer to choose one of their packages. This way the brand is providing useful content and at the same time garnering some attention from people. The best part about inbound marketing it that the engagement doesn’t stop with just one blog or something.
It will continue until the lead is pushed down to the sales funnel and make a purchase. It also helps with retaining a customer by maintaining a continuous relationship with them.
The process of turning a lead into a customer goes like this- Attract, Convert, Engage Delight.
Attract
This is the first step of the cycle. It is important to attract the followers and brands usually use blogs, related keywords, social media posts and guest posting to garner the attention of customers.
SEO, SMM, SEM plays a huge role in this attracting process.
Convert
Now that you have their attention, it is time to convert them. You can use landing pages, CTAs, contact forms to make them get in touch with you. Most of the companies make sure to include a CTA along with their blog as it eases the process of customer contacting the brand.
Engage
It is important to maintain a healthy relationship with the customer and you can do this by engaging with them on multiple fronts. You can send emails related to your products or any other industry information, send them relevant content on social media, and get some feedback from them. This two way engagement will also help you in bettering your service.
Delight
This is to build the brand loyalty. Once customer pays, the cycle isn’t over. It is important to stay in touch with them and make them a retaining customer. You can do this with the help of content marketing.
Knocking on their emails, messages, or WhatsApp with your offers will help in keeping them in loop all the time. It can also trigger them to make a purchase and this is what you want for your brand.
Why is Inbound Marketing Important for your Business?
When you offer some free yet important advice to customers, it will make them remember you whenever they need any product or service you offer. This free knowledge will also help in retaining the old customers.
Not only are you offering them the knowledge, you are also making them trust your business and you come across as a knowledgeable brand who has an in-depth idea about the product/service in the industry.
If you pay attention to what are the problems and queries your target audience are raising online, you will have an understanding of their requirement and curate content around it.
Role of SEO in Inbound Marketing
Whatever the query a person has, the first place they search for the answer is search engine. Some search about it on Google while some other go for Bing or any other search engine.
It is important for your website to get listed on the top of search engine. This will help in garnering the attention of audience right away. For this purpose, it is important to have proper SEO strategies in place.
SEO plays a quite an important place in Inbound marketing. Any company that wants to adopt inbound marketing strategies should implement SEO for better results.
There are four important SEO tactics that one has to focus on-
Keyword Research
This is the first step. Know the most relevant keywords that your business needs. Focus on those keywords and create strategy around it. These keywords should be your main focus and you have to focus on ranking for them only. You can conduct this keyword research using multiple tools. There are both paid and free tools in the market for this purpose.
Content Creation
Now that you know the keywords, you have to start working on creating content with those keywords. The more relevant content you have on your website, the better ranking you will get. So, it is important to create blogs, e-books in batches and publish them.
Image Optimization
Not just content, your images should also be optimized according to the search engine requirement. It will also bring in traffic and make you visible online. Make sure that you are using visually appealing images that are helping in garnering the audience attention.
Search Ads
Search ads can also help you in grabbing the eyeballs. Most of the people use landing pages to run search ads. If you integrate your landing page with our Office24by7 CRM, you will get to know about the visitor data, the pages they have visited and you can also prompt them to give their details by using any freebie.
Metrics and Analytics Matter
No matter what kind of inbound strategies you run, it is important to focus on the analytics too. You can use Office24by7 CRM to get these analytics with ease. We have an advanced marketing automation software with which you will get to track the visitors, analyze the visitor to lead traffic and many more.
Effective Inbound Marketing Strategy
It is important to develop an effective inbound marketing strategy that will help your business grow multifold. Here are few tips to draft and implement an effective inbound marketing strategy.
Understand the Target Audience
Create your audience personas. This is the first and foremost thing that you have to do and once you do this you can map out their journey. This starts from creating awareness to them to making them your brand advocate.
This is when you should also focus on the keywords your target audience are using to know about the product or services you offer. This keyword research is going to take some time, however, once you get a clarity on this it will be easy to curate content and publish it
Make Most of Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is here to stay and offer best ever support to the businesses. So, make use of the marketing automation to its fullest. You can opt for a CRM like Office24by7 which is easy to setup and can be your trusted partner in the inbound marketing journey.
Business Benefits of Inbound Marketing
To attract modern customers, companies have to look out for inbound marketing. How is inbound marketing going to play an important role in the growth of an organization? What are the benefits it is going to bring to the table? Let us know about all of these in this section.
Reduces the Costs
No matter which business it, it all boils down to cost cutting. A recent report from HubSpot has stated that the inbound marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing.
Paying for your advertisement on a billboard costs way lot more compared to posting a blog on your website and optimizing it, isn’t it? This is how the cost reduction happens when it comes to inbound marketing.
Generates Higher Quality Traffic
With inbound marketing, companies can generate high quality traffic. The inbound marketing is aiming at people who are your target audience and all you have to do is grab their attention with your blog. The leads you get from inbound marketing are quite trustworthy and are likely to be your customers in the long run.
Automated Inbound Strategy Saves Your Time
An automated inbound strategy can help you in saving the time a lot. There are so many tasks in inbound marketing that can be automated, this will give you a chance to work on various other tasks with ease.
Track the Metrics
If you use a CRM like Office24by7 for your inbound marketing strategies, it becomes quite easy to track all the metrics and understand where you stand. You can set the goals for leads, ROI, traffic and monitor them from time to time.
Wrapping it Up
When it comes to inbound marketing, there isn’t just one strategy. It is important for businesses to focus on multitude of options and work around them. Every one of the tasks will help in getting better conversions.
At Office24by7, we have an all in one marketing automation software that will help you in every step of the inbound marketing strategy. Our advanced software has the capability to automate multiple tasks and leave your marketing team with just important and creative work. Irrespective of your business size, we are here to aid you.
You can get in touch with us on +91 7097171717 or email us at sales@office24by7.com.
