Inbound Marketing: What It Is & How It Can Benefit Your Business
Marketing in the 21st century has changed drastically. In the past, most marketing campaigns sought to capture attention and then pitch the product. Today, though, companies have discovered it makes much more sense to allow customers to come to you.
Instead of interrupting what they were doing, you can attract the best leads using high-quality content and unique experiences that highlight what your brand is all about.
That’s where inbound marketing comes in.
Let LeadJig help you answer “what is inbound marketing?” as well as understand the most important steps in developing an inbound marketing strategy. We’ve even included a few examples to get you started on brainstorming for your business.
What is the Inbound Marketing Methodology?
According to the inbound marketing definition, it is the process attracting customers to interact with your brand instead of trying to push your brand into their lives using interruption marketing.
But to really define inbound marketing, we must understand the core principles that make it so successful.
Most audiences today have grown immune to old-fashioned marketing messages that interrupt what they are doing, cause friction in the way they consume content, and push sales messages the prospects just aren’t ready for yet.
Because of that, savvy brands have developed inbound marketing strategies that attract people to them, using high-quality and engaging content that offers value upfront and builds relationships.
By providing relevant value through your content, you will get people interested in the message itself. Then, you can build trust and engage your audience, showcasing your expertise and your brand values as well as positioning yourself as the ultimate solution for when they are ready to commit to buying.
What is the Inbound Marketing Funnel?
The inbound marketing funnel is an integral part of any successful strategy using this method. It clearly lays out the four key phases of any customer journey and helps you optimize each one to maximize results and outcomes.
The first step and the foundation of the entire inbound marketing strategy is the Attract stage, which is when you attract prospects into your website by publishing top-quality content they find interesting.
Then, during the Convert stage, you leverage the value provided in the content to literally convert prospects into leads. This is usually done by incentivizing an opt-in form with a freebie and getting people to subscribe to your newsletter or schedule a call.
Once you have a lead in your funnel, your sales team can get to work on educating the lead on what you have to offer and how your company can help them solve their problems. This is known as the Closing stage.
The final part of the inbound marketing process is to Delight your customers and strive to exceed their expectations every time a sale is made.
Inbound Marketing Strategies
Inbound marketing methodology only works if you use the right strategies at each phase of the customer journey.
For instance, when trying to attract new customers, you must take the time to research your audience and understand their core problems. This will help you create relevant content that attracts the right people.
When you want to engage your audience, you will need to develop an irresistible freebie that incentivizes them to opt-in. This can be a case study, a report, or even a free consultation, but you need to ensure that it provides tangible value your services can build upon.
Finally, if you want to increase your chances of closing leads into customers, you must strive to collect as much information about your leads as possible. Part of this will be done by your sales team, but you could also supplement their efforts using surveys, chatbots, or even direct email communications.
Inbound Marketing Examples
With inbound marketing so popular, it's not surprising there are many different ways to use it for your business.
As mentioned before, you can create your own content hubs on your site, featuring how-to articles, blog posts, white papers, case studies, videos, and any other engaging content to attract your audience and showcase your expertise.
You can also leverage your social media platforms to encourage your audience's participation, creating webinars, hosting Q&A sessions, and publishing user-generated content.
Finally, you can publish your content on prominent blogs and websites in your niche, expanding your reach, and getting more people familiar with your brand.
How to Integrate Inbound Marketing Into Your Campaigns
Making the switch to a more inbound marketing focused strategy can take commitment, especially if you're not used to this type of approach.
However, you don't have to make it a drastic change for it to be effective.
By creating a blog and regularly publishing valuable content, you can gradually integrate inbound marketing into your overall strategy. You’ll start attracting high-quality leads that will be pre-qualified to want to work with you.
By starting small, you can give yourself more room to find what works best, and slowly implement tweaks and changes until inbound marketing becomes your best lead generation method.
How LeadJig Can Help
Setting up an inbound marketing strategy is essential for any business today. But figuring out where to get started isn’t always easy.
At LeadJig, we can create a marketing plan for financial services that set up an effective inbound marketing strategy from scratch. If you want to learn more, please contact us.
