Inbound Marketing is a business-building methodology that is becoming more important for companies with each passing year. As consumers are growing more proactive and aware of their own needs, they demand more. Customers nowadays simply do not want to settle for less.
At its core, Inbound Marketing is all about allowing potential customers to find you on the Internet. This happens by making your content, services, and products as easily-reachable and discoverable as possible. The approach relies on the fact that modern-day consumers are more prone to personally seek out the information and products that they need (rather than wait for something to be advertised to them).
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound Marketing is a type of business strategy that focuses on creating high-quality content, tailored towards a specific group of consumers. The idea of Inbound Marketing is to allow the right type of customers to come to you, and then provide them with personalized services. The ultimate goal is aimed at establishing long-lasting business relationships and lifetime customers. As simple as that!
As we pointed out, the modern-day consumer is smarter and a lot more proactive. This mainly stems from the ability of everyone with connection to the Internet to research the type of product or service they are interested in and pick what’s best for them. In other words, the majority of people would prefer to personally search for and choose the product they’d like to purchase, rather than blindly go for what’s being advertised to them.
On a related note, it’s no secret that push-advertisement techniques are generally disliked by most consumers. Oftentimes these have an effect opposite to the one that’s intended. That includes ad email campaigns, pre-roll video ads, banner ads, etc. Such push-advertisement methods are typical for the Outbound Marketing strategy, which used to be more prevalent in the past, but is now starting to get replaced by the Inbound Marketing approach. This is also one of the main reasons why Inbound Marketing is so important to business nowadays.
The way Inbound Marketing works
Inbound Marketing works by letting you attract a specific targeted group of customers. These customers would, themselves, find your content, products, or services, rather have them advertised to them. This, in turn, makes it more likely for clients to stick around and engage in long-term business relationships with you and your company.
It is generally accepted that there are three main stages that make up the Inbound Marketing methodology. These are as follows:
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Attract Stage: This is the stage in which you need to tailor and optimize your content. This way it becomes easily-discoverable and reachable by the specific group or groups of customers that you are targeting. SEO plays a very large role in this stage, but there are many other viable techniques that can be employed here.
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Engage Stage: Once a potential customer is attracted to your content, it’s time to provide them with relevant information. That covers the problems they may be trying to resolve or the goals they may be trying to reach. The idea is to show them that your platform is, indeed, what they’ve been looking for.
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Delight Stage: After a business relationship has been established, you need to build trust and rapport by going the extra mile and showing care and commitment to that relationship, so that it continues in the future.
At each of those stages, you have the freedom to use a variety of content types. For instance, you can use search engine-optimized blog posts in the Attract Stage to help your potential customers find you. Then, in the engagement stage, you can use helpful instructional videos to make the information presented easier to digest. Lastly, for the Delight Stage, you can provide high-quality, multi-platform customer support.
Why is Inbound Marketing important for your business?
Inbound Marketing is important for your business, because it helps you build a more sustainable business model. It is cheaper in the long run and would get less affected by the whims of a fickle market. This is especially true when compared to the Outbound Marketing strategy.
It’s overall a long-term solution and, admittedly, requires some time to get started, because you first need time to build trust with your customers. This is one of the staples of a successful Inbound Marketing-oriented business.
Also, note that Inbound Marketing would often not get you as many customers as Outbound Marketing, but the upside is that each customer relationship would have much higher value, since it’s more likely to last for significantly longer and leave both parties much more satisfied.
Final words
If you are looking for high quality content for your Inbound Marketing campaign, you can always drop us a line at Sylably.com. Alternatively, you can send us a message on Facebook. We are specialized in delivering unique content that is tailored to your specific business requirements. Sell smart!
Read also: Top 7 tips for writing an article that sells
