Inbound marketing is a methodology that focuses on attracting customers to your business by creating valuable content designed to appeal to them. Tailoring the customer experience to attract your target audience generates higher quality leads. Whereas outbound marketing disrupts your audience by highlighting content they don’t always want, inbound marketing aims to meet the users’ needs.
This form of marketing has been around since 2006, however, it has grown in popularity in recent years. 74% of marketers globally cited it as their primary approach in 2020, which is why more and more organisations are seeing the many benefits the methodology offers.
Despite the introduction of intelligent CRM software, marketing automation and other tools, the core principles that have driven the success of inbound remain the same. The inbound methodology focuses on attracting high-quality leads that are more likely to purchase from you. This is why inbound methods cost less while often delivering a higher conversion rate and ROI.
The Benefits Of The Inbound Methodology
What makes the inbound methodology effective is how it incorporates a range of marketing techniques. This ensures all channels are synchronised to attract, engage, and delight future customers. It does this through a combination of content marketing, SEO, blogs, and social media. The inbound methodology is divided into three stages, each designed to nurture your prospective buyers into the next stage of their journey through to making a purchasing decision.
Attract – Entice the right people through valuable content and conversations that establish you as a thought leader in your industry who they can trust. Aim to earn a prospect’s trust which will make them want to engage with you.
Engage – Introduce insights and solutions that line up with your prospect’s pain points.
Delight – Provide support to empower customers to find success with their purchase as when customers find success, they’re likely to share it with others. This has the potential to attract more prospects to your business and act as a constant cycle.
Increase Brand Awareness
Before purchasing products or services, 81% of consumers researched options online. The same study showed people spent an average of 79 days exploring products online before making a purchase, which is why a business needs to appear online and deliver valuable content that matches search intent.
When your company appears at the top of search engines or on social networks, this raises your brand awareness. Inbound marketing improves ranking positions on search results by publishing high-value content. This content needs to be aligned with the buyer’s journey, so the target market finds your business during the research stage. Over 36% of clicks on SERPs occur on the link in a top position, which highlights how valuable ranking positions are to businesses.
Creating valuable content that matches the needs of a website’s users builds trust and encourages them to return to you throughout their research phase. They’ll also be more likely to share compelling content on social media, which further raises your visibility as a knowledgeable and trustworthy resource in your industry.
Attract High-Quality Leads
It’s important to attract the right leads, people who are interested in what you do and more likely to make a purchase. This benefits both you and your visitors as you meet their needs and make them more likely to buy from your business.
More traditional marketing methods focus on generating as many leads as possible, leads who may not be entirely interested in what your brand has to say. This is where the inbound methodology differs from outbound strategies. Inbound marketing focuses on attracting more qualified leads as these visitors are actively seeking out the information you’ve published. As opposed to mass marketing to a broad range of people who may not be interested in what you offer.
Publishing valuable content helps to build meaningful relationships with potential customers. It’s a vital part of the consumer journey as the inbound methodology helps to raise awareness, nurture leads, and ultimately prompt site users to complete the desired action such as complete a purchase or submit a form.
Deliver A High ROI
Delivering demonstrable results should be a clear goal with any marketing technique. Inbound marketing is a strategy that provides a measurable ROI. Taking a more streamlined approach where you focus your spend on bringing in higher-quality leads saves money while attracting prospects more likely to convert into loyal customers.
Outbound methods act as a form of mass marketing, such as cold calling and online adverts. While aimed at a broad range of people, these techniques can still be risky and unnecessarily costly. Even if outbound tactics generate more traffic, if it isn’t the right traffic, the conversion rate will be low.
Sustainable Marketing
When customers find success with a business, they’re likely to share this with others in their network, online and offline. Whether it’s friends, family, or social media. A customer who has an overwhelmingly positive experience with a brand is more likely to highlight this to their inner and outer circle. This introduces new prospects to your business, which is why it’s an affordable, cost-effective, and sustainable marketing method long term.
After delighting existing customers with a successful purchase experience, they will share it and make others aware of your business. By securing a sale, you potentially also market towards future customers. In theory, once enough happy customers have purchased from you they have the potential to create a steady stream of new customers.
Build Trust Signals
Publishing insightful, valuable, and trustworthy content is the primary way to initially build trust. It’s also the ideal way to establish a rapport with people who visit a site, which makes it more likely for the prospect to convert into a customer.
Inbound marketing inherently creates trust as visitors have landed on your site without being pushed to. Outbound methods disrupt a user’s search whereas inbound delivers the relevant information that users are actively seeking. It’s the user’s choice and if you provide valuable content, this only creates more trust signals. Users who recommend your business will also trust you as someone they know has already had a positive experience.
How Can We Help?
At Loop Digital, we have adopted inbound marketing practices to deliver tangible results for our client-partners. 94% of salespeople asked by LinkedIn in 2020 called the leads they received from inbound marketing either excellent or good. By implementing the inbound methodology into your wider strategy you’ll set your organisation on the path towards generating higher-quality leads and increasing sales. Get in touch with our friendly team to discuss your inbound strategy and how it can benefit your business.
