The Inbound Marketing Definition And How to Attract Consumers With It

Have you heard whispers about inbound marketing and want to know exactly what it is, as well as why so many people are jumping on this bandwagon? well, here’s everything that you need to know! After reading this article, not only will you understand inbound marketing but how to use it too.

What’s Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing can be defined as a term that refers to the promotion of a company or website through content, social media and organic search results (or search engine traffic).

There are four stages to an inbound marketing cycle and these are:

Stage 1: Attract

The first stage is to attract traffic to your landing pages because without visitors, you can’t begin to sell anything, which also means no revenue. The inbound way of attracting web traffic to your site is by blogging, social media, and clever keyword research (Search engine optimization or SEO) among others.

Inbound marketing doesn’t use cold calls or cold emailing to attract visitors. Instead, it relies on strategies like content marketing, SEO, paid advertising, social media engagement etc. In this stage, there are three primary elements of importance and these are:

1. Blog Content

One of the most important elements for attracting new traffic organically is by blogging. This will only work if you write high-quality content for your target audience. When creating a content calendar (not necessary but useful), think about what your target market would search for on Google and answer those questions in a blog post!

2. Keyword Research

This helps you find out how your target audience is searching for what you do? The process is called keyword research.

When writing content for the web, there’s no point in writing without any aim or end goal in mind. If you’re writing a blog post that nobody is searching for on Google or other search engines, you may not attract any traffic. That’s why it’s important to research the keywords that you wish to target before creating a content calendar.

3. Social Media

It’s vitally important to be active on social media because it’s one of the best ways of getting your blog content in front of your target demographic. You can also use it to communicate in real-time with your target market. For example, you might see that someone has tweeted, asking a question that your product is the perfect solution for. You can reply and point them to your landing page in a natural and non-promotional way.

Stage 2: Convert

After you’ve attracted visitors to your landing page, the next stage is to convert them into qualified leads. This is another crucial stage in inbound marketing that simply cannot be skipped. Without this stage, you may be left with a website full of traffic but still no revenue. In this stage, there are two primary elements of strategic importance.

1. Forms

In order to generate leads from your landing page traffic, you’re going to need a well-designed contact form that stands out. To avoid discouraging visitors from filling the form, keep it minimal but without giving up any vital information that you’ll need in order to close the deal in the third stage.

2. Call-to-Actions (CTA)

You’ll also need a clear call-to-action that will let your visitor know exactly what to do! After they’ve filled out the form and hit the send button, make sure they know how long before you contact them. Also, be specific with your CTAs. For example, “submit” is not a very clear or attractive CTA, whereas “Get Your 10% Discount Code” or “Send Message” is much better.

Stage 3: Close

Now that you’ve got a list of people that have shown interest by providing their contact information but have not yet purchased anything, it’s time to work on closing the deal. This is the third stage of the inbound marketing cycle and like others, there’s a crucial element at play and that’s…

Lead Nurturing

Contrary to popular belief, the best way to close a deal is not by reading from a scripted sales pitch but by lead nurturing. This means that you should only send content to your email list that they’ve shown interest in. For instance, when someone signs up to the Tech Help Canada mailing list, we only send them content that’ll help them improve their business outcomes.

Depending on your blog or industry, this can be as simple as sending out every new publication. However, if your business requires more attention, you can use a customer relationship management (CRM) tool to monitor and analyze prospects or customer behavior.

Stage 4: Delight

The final stage is to delight the customer so that he or she may share their buying experience with others such as their friends, family, and colleagues. This is known as word-of-mouth and the key for gaining greater reach, as well as restarting the inbound marketing cycle again (like a loop). There’s one critical element and that’s…

Loyalty Offers or Promotions

One good way of encouraging customers to share their experience with others is by offering them something for free. For instance, you can offer your customers a 10% discount on their next purchase if they share your website on social media. Most of the time, customers are happy to share; they just need a little nudge.

So What’s The Inbound Marketing Definition?

A marketing strategy that naturally entices consumers to visit your website or place of business, rather than you chasing after them.

Tech Help Canada Staff

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