Today’s consumers are becoming smarter and eager for more personalized experiences. More and more companies are paying attention to this and making their customers feel unique.
So, what is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound Marketing is a methodology that emerged to satisfy a need for brands to relate to their potential customers in a less intrusive way, generating value and accompanying them on their purchasing journey. Also called Attraction Marketing, consists of a set of techniques that aim to make your potential customers find you on the Internet, get involved with your brand and finally buy. All this without bothering the user, since it is characterized as “Permission Marketing”.
Attraction marketing is the art of getting customers to search for you, rather than using Outbound Marketing methods in which companies search for customers.
This does not mean that traditional marketing is no longer effective, but that in reality, it is not as effective without its counterpart, Inbound.
With a well-thought-out strategy, Inbound and Outbound Marketing can work together by combining them. If you have used traditional marketing techniques to attract a customer, you also need an Inbound strategy to nurture this potential buyer.
To better understand the Inbound Marketing process, we must keep in mind that it is structured around five phases:
1. Traffic attraction
To get the whole process started, the first step is to attract users to the brand’s website. However, we do not seek to generate massive visits, but rather focus on attracting quality users to the website, users who match your ideal customer profile.
To achieve this goal, you must rely on a variety of techniques, such as:
- SEO: if you work to position your website in the first places of the main search engines, your website will function as a response to the user’s needs at the right time.
- Content marketing: offering users valuable content when they need it will reinforce the attraction process.
- Social networks: using them as dissemination channels to help your content reach users.
2. The conversion
Once the user has arrived at your website, you want them to leave their information to become a potential customer and continue receiving our information.
To convert users into potential customers, the classic strategy is to provide them with valuable content in exchange for leaving their data in a form. But there are many more options, such as offering trial demos, meetings, or interacting with them through a phone call or chat. In any case, the goal will always be to obtain your data and add your information to your database.
3. Marketing automation
This pillar of inbound marketing is based on systematizing the process by which you communicate with your potential customers until they become customers. For this, you can use techniques such as:
- Leadscoring: a technique based on the design of an evaluation system that allows you to objectively evaluate the probability of a potential client becoming a client.
- Leadnurturing: according to the score obtained and the characteristics of the potential client, a series of automatic flows is designed to send relevant information to your contacts according to their needs.
4. Loyalty
The process does not end when you manage to convert a potential client into a client. The next step is to ensure that this customer stays with you for as long as possible as a result of loyalty strategies, such as newsletters, offers and incentives that turn them into true promoters of the brand.
Designing an effective loyalty strategy is very beneficial for the company, since maintaining a customer is much less expensive than acquiring a new customer from scratch.
5. The analysis
No inbound marketing strategy is complete if you don’t have a plan to measure and analyze results. For this, you will have to carefully define the KPIs, that is, the most relevant indicators to evaluate whether your strategy is being successful or not.
It is also necessary to establish periodic controls to analyze current results and adjust previously established actions based on them. This will make your attraction strategy improve over time.
In conclusion, the purpose of Inbound Marketing is to attract leads, who over time become clients. Without having reached these clients in an intrusive and overwhelming way, but rather they come to us for their own interests and needs.
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