Now before we directly start with “What exactly is Inbound marketing”?

Let’s have a look at a very familiar marketing scenario.

When you go out in the shopping complex with your family/friends to shop, what is it that attracts, motivates or pushes you to go to a particular shop to check out some interesting stuff?

Take 5 seconds to think

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It’s really very simple, the reasons are

1. The lavish infrastructure of the shop
2. Decorations
3. Attractive Products
4. Attractive Salespersons

So, these are the factors that attract any customer to enter in a particular shop. The moment you take entry in that shop you become their inbound traffic.

Has it ever happened to you that any salesperson has called you and asked you that “We have some great products please come and check them out”?

No, right?

Because the shop itself had some attractive elements that urged you to go inside.

This is nothing but “Inbound Marketing”

The term Inbound Marketing came in trend because of the marketing software tool HubSpot. 

Getting Started with Inbound Marketing

The basic idea is the technique of attracting people by offering them relevant content rather than annoying them with outbound sales messages. Once you succeed to grab a prospect’s attention then you have many ways and tips using which you can  generate more inbound leads and continue to engage them and one of them is Email Marketing.

First, you need to understand the Customers Buying Journey before you actually implement Inbound Marketing.

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Now have a look at the above image, let’s see in detail

In the attract stage, the customer who has not visited your website till now becomes the visitor.

Next, that visitor starts showing interest in your products that turn him into a lead. Then your lead spends money on your products to become a customer. And then in the last stage i.e delight, your customer becomes your promoter.

Later he inspires others to explore your business by word of mouth only if you will be able to give a positive experience to him. This is how Customers Buying Journey flows.

In this article, you will get to learn Why you need Inbound marketing and how you can Initiate it?

Let’s get started.

Why Inbound Marketing Is in Fashion Today?

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Unlike Outbound Marketing where marketers make many attempts to find customers, Inbound Marketing grabs the attention of the customers and makes it easy for the company to be found.

In Inbound Marketing, you constantly generate content whether it be blog posts, ebooks, videos or podcasts that help you attract buyers or would-be buyers to come to your brand rather than going out there or calling them or paying for advertisements.

Let’s say you develop a blog post, you are going to get organic traffic on that post for a long time than just maybe one email campaign or a banner advertisement.

Today I think Inbound Marketing is where most marketing teams should spend their efforts on because its really a battlefield out there where most of the companies are competing for attention and let the best content win, right?

It’s fair that if one company spending ton time building videos and interactive content and you are getting left out doing the same so at the end, the potential customer will definitely go ahead with the most deserving company.

SO OBVIOUS, isn’t it?

We live in an increasingly connected world where information flows from anywhere to everywhere. The pace of information creation is accelerating without any end. Buyers today are more qualified now because the web provides them instant information that gives them access to every detail of the products like specifications, pricing, reviews, etc. and that too with just a few flicks of their thumb. Meanwhile, social media plays a very important role to encourage them for sharing and comparing.

Inbound Marketing is so powerful and you can take advantage of that power by providing the exact answers to the questions of the searchers/customers.

What is the most important factor of Inbound Marketing?

When you are starting with Inbound marketing you first need to think about who the inbound marketing is targeted to and get as specific as possible. If you go ahead and create an inbound marketing strategy for a specific group of people, you are going to get more and more success.

How to Initiate Your Inbound Marketing?

In simple words, when it comes to inbound marketing “The more you invest, the more you make”. Developing awesome content is more about creativity and commitments rather than budget. Psychologically you can influence many customers, visitors, and searchers. Instead of throwing money put your heart and soul into it.

Here’s how you can start:

1. First things first you need to identify your target audience and understand every bit about them.

Why?

Of course, you can’t write the content to inform your target audience without knowing what makes them come and check what you are writing.

2. You must determine your USP and unique story. The audience should have a reason to listen to you.

3. Decide and choose how you are going to deliver your contents to them. Will you blog? Tweet? Use YouTube? Or Facebook?

4. Schedule your content and for that, you can create a Content Calendar.

Always remember your content should always focus on customers’ issue and not on your business.

And after implementing all the above things, set aside time to analyse on a weekly basis. This habit will definitely help you understand how much the efforts are effective in inbound marketing and the area on which you still need to improve.

Use Inbound Marketing Proposal

If you are digital marketing agency or boutique marketing agency specialized in growth hacking for internet companies (SaaS, eCommerce, etc) and pitching your services, you have to use a convincing inbound marketing proposal. Stunning design, logical structure and convincing copy of proposal template will help you close more inbound marketing projects.

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Subscribe to Proposal Software blog and know about how to write winning proposals, learn about proposal software features,  creative email marketing to drive more traffic, challenges bloggers face & how content calendar can help, sales closing techniques, and more.

 

Image Reference:
[1] Customer Buying Journey