What is Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is about captivating and attracting your audience so that you can eventually tell them about your offer. Potential customers find you by interacting with your content, including blogs, video, social media, audio, ebooks, whitepapers, reports, and more. Businesses that decide to pursue an inbound methodology are looking to rope in customers. It is the exact opposite of outbound marketing, such as advertising, where you venture out and try to woo your customers.
Why Inbound Marketing?
When compared to outbound marketing, it has a much higher return investment. In several studies, inbound marketing has doubled the conversion rate on websites. Therefore, inbound marketing is a smart and sustainable way of building a brand while differentiating yourself from your competition.
Inbound marketing, done right, not only draws visitors in, it assures quick conversions and slowly builds brand loyalty. An inbound marketing methodology embraces a professional brand of seduction, if you will, that will funnel traffic to your premises, site, or product. If you can grab their attention and keep them focused on you long enough, you will be a winner in the long run.
The Latest Inbound Marketing Statistics
If you still aren’t convinced, check out the latest inbound marketing statistics below:
- According to Think With Google, a relevant search influences 39% of purchasers.
- According to a 2021 Hubspot study, 60% of marketers reported that inbound, SEO, blog content, video, and more, is currently their best quality source of leads.
- Search Engine Land found that 70-80% of users ignore sponsored search results in Google and other search engines.
- A study by the Annuitas Group found that nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.
- Another study by Hubspot found that inbound marketing delivers 54% more leads than traditional outbound marketing. HubSpot also found that inbound marketing costs less per lead than traditional marketing, 62% less per lead.
- According to EyeWideDigital, a video on your landing page increases your conversion rate by up to 80%.
- Also, by Hubspot, 69% of potential customers prefer video over text when learning about a product or service.
Key Fundamentals of Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing has revolutionized the way people do business. It is a strategy far removed from traditional outbound marketing that embraces vigorous advertising and frequent cold calling. Companies trying to get a grip on their inbound marketing strategy can easily get off track. It is, therefore, essential to ensure that you get the fundamentals right before going all out. If you are trying to get your inbound marketing game off the ground, here are three tips to get you started with inbound marketing.
- Identify Your Audience: Don’t just fashion a product out of thin air; you must have an idea of who will buy it and what would motivate them to buy it. A successful inbound marketing strategy identifies and responds to prospective customer’s current needs. Your pitch should always consider the needs of your prospect. If a customer barely knows where they are needs-wise, you probably won’t get far with them. It would be like trying to sell gas to someone who doesn’t own a car yet. A proper inbound marketing strategy meets customers at their point of need.
- Promote Yourself: Inbound marketing does not excuse you from putting in a shift when it comes to promotion. Though your main goal is to hook prospects in, outreach is necessary. How else will they know you exist if you don’t make it known? Search engines are the modern avenue humans use to solve their problems. If you want prospects to find your business online, you must have an online strategy. Get your keyword and social media game in order so that your solution pops up in search queries. You can never have too much visibility, so ensure you have a presence on social media sites, blogs, and video services like YouTube. With consistency, you will build a large enough audience to create the attention needed for effective scalability.
- Focus on Value Proposition: After identifying where clients are needs-wise and having set up online hooks to funnel potential clients in, inbound marketers must provide value. It’s not enough to have the right messaging and promotion; you must make it worth their while. You provide value by offering content that educates, captivates, and entertains. Educational articles, videos, white papers, and case studies are a big help; an occasional joke or two wouldn’t hurt either. A Ropers, Public Affairs study indicates that 80% of content seekers prefer articles to advertisements to get information about a company.
In a nutshell, inbound marketing is all about driving traffic by being as attractive to a prospect as possible. Inbound marketers need to identify their audience, promote their content effectively and offer a strong value proposition.
Below are some key fundamentals of inbound marketing:
- Contacts: A contact is someone you engage with as a buyer, partner, seller, or prospective client. The process of acquiring contacts involves trying to turn strangers into loyal customers.
- Buyer Personas: A buyer persona is a partly fictional representation of your perfect customer. Specifically, who they are, how they behave, their income level, where they work (industry, sector, etc.), their shopping habits, and where they live—these issues are based on actual data and educated guesswork.
- The buyer’s journey: Inbound marketing should always respect where a prospective customer is in the sales funnel. Buyers have to go through a process that begins with recognizing a need, learning about a solution, considering it, evaluating it, and deciding whether to buy or not. Understanding where buyers are in their journey is valuable for an inbound marketer. A successful marketer places themselves at the intersection between a buyer journey stage where the prospect recognizes a need and a possible solution.
- Content: Once contacts are established, it is essential to ensure you hold their attention. Maintaining their attention is how you reel them in, and voila! You have a new client. Great content educates and entertains your audience. It has to be top quality and geared towards value creation. Blogs, educational articles, videos, white papers, case studies, and social media content are all examples of content. Your content must be relevant to client needs, informative, engaging, and solve a problem. These four attributes make great content, and soon you become a trusted source.
- Goal setting: An inbound marketer must have a compass to direct everything they do. There have to be clear goals that help track past and current performance and compare this with future goals. Goal setting helps you keep your eye on the prize and take corrective action whenever you deviate from the course.