What Is Inbound Marketing And How Could It Benefit Me?
In any business, marketing is vital for building your brand and getting your message out to your audience. People talk about old and new, outbound and inbound marketing but what does that mean and which methods should your business adopt?
What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is often termed as ‘new marketing’. It is a way of attracting business through creating interesting and relative content. By creating compelling content and sharing it with the world means that you attract peoples’ interest and eventually convert strangers into customers of your brand.
Inbound marketing is a cost-effective marketing strategy that draws people into your brand rather than pushing your message out there. It not only converts strangers into customers but by creating content that is specifically designed to appeal to your clients, you turn customers into promoters and ambassadors of your brand. Inbound marketing doesn’t impact on customers straightaway. Instead, it builds trust and intrigue and eventually can ensure repeat business.
What Does Inbound Marketing Include?
- Whitepapers
- Blogs
- Podcasts
- Video
- Ebooks
- E-newsletters
- SEO
- Social media
Inbound Versus Outbound?
Inbound marketing is often termed ‘new marketing’ whereas outbound is considered more traditional. Outbound marketing is designed to push your message out to the audience.
Traditional outbound methods include:
- TV Advertisements
- Sales fliers
- Telemarketing
- Spam
- Cold-calling
- Radio
It is thought that traditional marketing methods are not as effective due to an increasingly diminishing audience and inbound marketing methods are much more engaging and much more accessible. However, inbound marketing is designed to supplement outbound marketing methods, not replace it.
To understand how to balance your marketing strategies, you need to know your audience. For example, in a recent survey, it is suggested that 84% of 25-35-year-olds are likely to close a website if it has excessive advertising. By understanding your audience, you can create a marketing strategy that suits their lifestyle and carefully balances inbound and outbound methods.
Why Should I Use Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing not only sells a product or service, but it also helps to build your business and your brand. Creating content helps people to find answers to their questions as well as allowing people to compare and research competitors. It helps to pull people into your brand and attract inbound traffic.
Carefully crafted content can help customers throughout the whole sales journey. Content must naturally and organically capture the reader’s attention and align to their interests, this helps you to draw in an audience, which you can then convert to buyers of your product and once they are buyers, you can close the loop and keep long-term customers as brand promoters.
While content creation is used to build up an audience and encourage sales, content is a powerful way of maintaining customers. It is often overlooked, but content should also be designed for your actual customers not just potential customers. Content can help customers to better use your products and services and keep them engaged, after all, it is easier to maintain customers who will give referrals and promote you than win over new potential buyers.
If you want to find out more about how inbound marketing strategies can benefit your business, contact Money Marketers today, to help you reach new audiences and turn customers into brand ambassadors.
