Inbound Marketing: The Beginner's Guide
What is inbound marketing?
Inbound Marketing is a strategy that relies on attracting customers through content and interactions that are relevant and helpful – not interruptive. By being helpful, companies can build trust and a relationship with their customers. Then, when they are ready to buy, they will naturally turn to companies they know, like, and trust.
The inbound methodology can be applied in three ways:
Attracting is about using your expertise to create content and conversations that start meaningful relationships with the right people. This phase should be focused on creating a strong lead magnet that speaks to the needs of your audience, and then using social media to get it out there in front of their eyes.
Engaging is about building lasting relationships with people by providing insights and solutions that align with their roadblocks and goals. Once you've attracted them, engaging is all about being available when they need help or want more information from your brand.
Delighting is about providing an outstanding experience that adds real value, empowers people to reach their goals, and become promoters of your company. This phase should be dedicated to creating amazing experiences for your customers that go above and beyond what they expect from you!
Why implement inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is an approach that integrates content, social media, and technology with traditional marketing tools to attract, engage, and convert customers. It's designed to break down the silos between teams. When all of your teams are aligned around an inbound approach, you can provide a holistic experience for anyone who interacts with your business, no matter where they are in their buying journey. To create relationships that last and customers who stay, every customer-facing team needs to focus on how they can contextually attract, engage, and delight your business’ strangers, prospects, customers, and promoters and continue to build trust in your brand. That’s why, with the new methodology, marketers, salespeople, and service professionals can each attract, engage, and delight in their own ways.
The new methodology will help you:
1. Build trust with customers by defining what it means to be a brand advocate for your business
2. Attract more prospects through marketing content that speaks to them
3. Create engaging experiences for prospective customers as well as existing ones
4. Drive customer loyalty by going above and beyond for your most important advocates
Marketing in the twenty-first century is a dynamic business move and can often determine the success of a small business. Inbound marketing allows small businesses to attract potential customers with relevant content, fuelled by some traditional SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) content. It utilizes the Internet in order to reach these potential customers and then "pull" them to your site, rather than using other tactics that have previously dominated marketing such as "hard" selling or aggressive marketing tactics.
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