A Step-by-Step Guide to Enhancing the Benefits of Inbound Marketing

Every business owner wants a meaningful, long-lasting relationship with their customers. One of the most feasible ways to achieve that goal is through inbound marketing. 

Across the numerous types of marketing, all of them inherently have the same goal: to attract potential customers and retain them. Its effectiveness, however, depends on various aspects, like your audience, your marketing strategy, the platform you use, and most importantly, your business objective.

Knowing your objective is important in deciding which marketing method to apply. Do you have a new product to launch, or do you want to pull in interested audiences and optimize your audience engagement? If it’s the latter, then consider inbound marketing as your strategy.

What is Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing can be considered organic marketing, where you create different kinds of content to engage and drive customers to your website or social media page. The goal is to spread brand awareness that leads to potential customers making a purchase.

According to Neil Patel, the essential idea of inbound marketing is to provide value first and convert customers later. Instead of pushing ads to reach as many audiences as possible, inbound marketing is designed to attract them. This is why it’s often referred to as “pull marketing”.

Inbound marketing utilizes various kinds of content to achieve its goal. It isn’t only limited to social media posts, but also blog posts, infographics, videos, e-books, news articles, and even webinars.

Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

If inbound marketing is “pull marketing”, outbound marketing is the opposite. Outbound marketing is considered a more traditional way of marketing, in which promotions are “pushed” to reach as many audiences as possible. It’s the company that approaches potential customers first, rather than the opposite.

Apart from the methods of reaching audiences, inbound and outbound marketing work differently depending on your business type. Inbound marketing is effective for B2C, according to Cognism, while outbound marketing suits B2B marketing more.

Getting customers familiar with your products and services is the key to successful inbound marketing. In this case, you need to target audiences who are actually interested in your products and services. You can do things like answer Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and post them as blog posts or social media feeds. As a result, your audiences will know your products and services better, become more interested, and be more likely to become customers.

In comparison, outbound marketing is suitable if you want to draw in a broad audience, especially when your company launches a brand-new product or service. Outbound marketing uses both online and offline channels such as putting ads on billboards, TV commercials, or other methods that are quite effective at catching the crowd’s attention. 

Another difference between the two is their cost. Inbound marketing is relatively cheaper because it mainly utilizes online platforms. Outbrain stated that inbound leads have been shown to cost around 60% less than outbound leads.

Read more: Paid Social Media Ads: Is It Worth Trying?

How to Do Inbound Marketing Effectively

Thinking of using inbound marketing for your company? There are generally three strategies according to HubSpot: attract, engage, and delight.

Attract

In this strategy, you have to develop a strong content strategy. As the name suggests, this is where you attract your consumers with your blog articles or social media posts. Don’t forget to optimize the SEO strategy to make sure your target audience can find you easily.

Engage

Communicate with your consumers the right way, especially how your customer service handles them. In engaging your audience, you should make sure that you’re “solution selling” rather than “product selling.” It’ll benefit both your business and the consumers.

Delight

When the consumers are satisfied and happy, they become loyal to your brand. Therefore, you need to make sure that you assist and support your customers throughout their purchasing journey. It can also mean you reward them with discounts or coupons.

Final Thoughts

It is important to note that a successful marketing campaign benefits both your business and consumers. With inbound marketing, you can do both. You can satisfy your consumers by providing relevant information and assistance. In turn, they may become more loyal to your brand and boost your brand reputation, resulting in improved ROI.

Read Next: Why High-Quality Content is Important for Your Business