Inbound marketing is a marketing method where the main goal is attracting people to your company who are already seeking out your specific services. Inbound marketing is unlike traditional marketing because it isn’t intrusive by sending generic messages to as many people as possible and hoping that a handful will respond. Instead, inbound marketing pulls visitors towards your business by producing interesting content that appeals to your ideal customer.
Traditional Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing
Traditional Marketing is marketer centric and uses interruptive tactics, such as cold calling, print advertising and TV advertising. These tactics push content in peoples faces and are rather expensive. Also, the expansion of technology is starting to make them less effective. With traditional marketing, marketers have all control.
Inbound Marketing is a customer-centric marketing strategy and is a fundamental shift in the way we do business. This strategy empowers your customers, paying attention to their needs and not your marketers needs. Inbound marketing focuses on being found by customers. Inbound marking can achieve this through search engine optimization and content marketing such as blogging and social media posts.
The best way to start thinking about inbound marketing is by understanding the inbound marketing methodology. There are four (4) stages that make up the marketing and sales process:
Attract
You need to attract strangers to your website and turn them into visitors. Blogging, optimizing your website and social media are all ways you can do this.
Convert
The conversion process will help you convert visitors into leads by gathering their contact information. You can use calls-to-action and landing pages to get this information. In order for visitors to give up information willingly, it is important you offer something of interest and valuable in return. This could include Ebooks, whitepages and tip sheets.
Close
When you close, you turn leads into customers. Customer relationship management (CRM) and emails can be used to help sell to the right leads at the right time.
Delight
Inbound companies continuously delight and engage their customer base who eventually turn into promoters of your products and services. This whole methodology process starts again once promoters have spread the word about what you offer.