Inbound marketing is an effective strategy for companies to establish trust and develop lasting relationships with their clients. By creating a positive customer experience that draws in prospects and increases visibility, inbound marketing helps marketers connect with and influence clients without resorting to traditional sales tactics.
A core element of inbound marketing is content. You will have heard the term ‘content is king’, but in the case of inbound, it really is. What this means is that quality trumps quantity and that’s what marketers should prioritize in their inbound marketing strategy. But there’s a lot more to inbound marketing than basically creating great content.
But what exactly is inbound marketing? Inbound marketing is a strategic approach that focuses on creating valuable content and experiences tailored to the needs of your audience to construct long-term relationships. The key to inbound marketing is that it gives solutions to the needs of your customers. By doing that you can build lasting relationships and cultivate brand advocates.
Marketers across industries are likely to utilize outbound and inbound marketing strategies to engage and convert leads. But what are the differences between them?
Inbound:
- Global audience, enormous potential reach
- Ability to target relevant audiences with specific messaging
- Ability to track audience behavior and optimize campaigns
- Overall cheaper costs than outbound marketing
Outbound:
- Ideal for local, specific audiences
- Integral part of omnichannel marketing
- Appeals to audience segments who are not digital natives
- Strong focus on building brand awareness
Content Marketing
As marketers, we now and then get so caught up in attracting new clients that we lose sight of what’s right in front of us – an existing customer base that’s already interested in our products and services. We should be focused on retaining the customers we do have. Your site should be a living, breathing entity. Each update you make to your site plays a role in its interaction with both look engines and customers.
The newer content you offer, the more value you include in your users’ experience, which in turn, will keep them coming back for more.
Luckily, frequent content updates don’t necessarily have to come in the form of blog posts and newsletters. Feel free to diversify your content offerings with FAQs, product demos, how-to guides, vlogs, and podcasts. Of course, publishing content on an ongoing basis is easier said than done.
Social media posts make for fabulous retention content. From quick tips and videos to new products and feature releases, social media is a resource that can be used to connect with customers and keep them engaged.
Relationships are a two-way street, which is why brands need to both listen and communicate with their audience to nurture a meaningful relationship.
Social Media Marketing
The main reason why social media is an integral part of inbound marketing is because of its gigantic growth over recent years. You’re getting direct access to many potential customers by actively being on major social media sites.
According to Statistica’s research data, there are currently 3.96 billion active users on social media in 2022, and it is expected to rise to 4.41 billion by 2025.
Here are of the main reasons why social media is an important part of inbound marketing:
- Creates brand awareness: Customers require consistent reminders, and they also need to be informed of product and service updates. You’ll easily do so by posting frequent content on social media. On average, people spend 2.4 hours per day scrolling through posts on social media. Customers are also driven to buy from socially responsible brands and make fair contributions now and then. Many businesses have Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies that positively impact. Whether it’s giving internships, work opportunities, helping the underprivileged or being environmentally concerned. You can. showcase your business’s CSR activities on social media, leading to higher brand reliance and credibility.
- Easier and faster two-way communication: Clients become more dependent on businesses that listen to their problems and develop solutions. Also, when customers see that you are responding to their issues and providing quick real-time solutions, they will tend to become brand loyal. This will ensure repeat purchases and super effective word-of-mouth marketing that can immensely contribute to your business’s goodwill.
- Drives traffic to your website: For some products or services, your customers would perhaps like to know more. You can include joins of value-packed articles and case studies from your website to the posts or stories on your social media profile which will drive higher traffic to your site. Overall, it’ll immensely help your SEO efforts.
- Humanize the brand: Individuals use social media to interact, understand, and reciprocate their feelings. You can leverage the power of feelings to connect with your customers. Psychologically, when you can make someone realize that you can resonate with them, you subconsciously convince them to listen to you. You can use social media to form substance and posts to show different emotional reactions depending on the item or service, situation, the purpose of its use, and the demographic you are targeting.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
In simple terms, it implies the process of improving your site to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business in Google, Bing, and other search engines. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you’re to gather attention and attract planned and existing customers to your business.
SEO is a crucial part of advanced marketing because people conduct trillions of searches each year, often with commercial intent to find data about products and services. Search is frequently the primary source of digital traffic for brands and complements other marketing channels. Greater visibility and ranking higher in look results than your competition can have a material impact on your bottom line.
However, the search results have been evolving over the past few years to give users more direct answers and information that’s more likely to keep users on the results page instead of driving them to other websites.
A demand generation program is an essential step toward optimizing your marketing funnel and increasing your lead generation efforts.
For a comprehensive look into what it takes to be a demand generation marketer and the strategies, you can start sending within your organization, if you are ready to start and benefit from a strategy in Demand Generation in your business, you can get in touch with us at alliedgloba.com and get more information and start applying these services to your business.