You may have heard the term ‘inbound marketing’ or ‘content marketing’ and wondered what it is and how it would work for your business. Inbound marketing is a ‘complete’ marketing strategy affecting the top of the funnel through to the bottom (and beyond), thus it has a lot of moving parts. Here’s a simple explanation on how the most innovative trend in digital marketing works – and how it can work for you.

To begin, inbound marketing is all about getting found online by your audience through content creation. By creating valuable, relevant content your prospects and customers are already looking for, inbound marketing focuses on engaging your target audience, instead of interrupting them like traditional outbound marketing tactics do.Inbound marketing focuses on identifying, attracting and converting the right kind of prospects to your business and turning them into satisfied customers and brand loyalists.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

You may have heard that “the traditional marketing model is broken”. This refers to the fact that customers are no longer responding to ‘old-school’ advertising tactics like television or radio commercials, print ads or even digital ad campaigns. Yes, even the digital world has an ‘old-school’!

Customers aren’t waiting around for your advertising messages. As well, because of the new way they consume media, they’re tuning out a lot advertising that brands spend a lot of time an effort on.

Instead they’re searching online for the content that they want to see; content that solves a problem, fulfills a need or simply aligns with their interests. They are seeking out their own information, making their buying process a much more informed one.

The inbound marketing methodology is able to better position your company to be the solution your customers are looking for, by providing online content that speaks to them and their specific interests and needs.

How It Works

There are four steps to inbound marketing that reflect the stages in the buyer’s journey.

• ATTRACT - Identify and attract the attention of the ‘right’ kind of prospect (as in, qualified)
• CONVERT - Obtain contact information of these prospects to turn them into a lead
• CLOSE - Determine what interests will trigger them to a purchase decision & send them targeted offers or information
• DELIGHT - Once the lead is a customer, continue to nurture the relationship so that become brand loyalists and cheerleaders.

In short, inbound marketing is the process of attracting the attention of qualified prospects, converting them into leads, turning them into customers and delighting them into becoming brand advocates.

It’s one of the best and most cost-effective ways to turn strangers into customers and promoters of your business. If you want to learn more about inbound marketing or if you’d like to have a conversation about how inbound marketing strategy could be applied to your business, please contact us. We’d love to talk – no pressure or obligation.