Customer experience is key these days and the masses have spoken.
No one wants to be sold to anymore.
Audiences don’t want cold calls, they don’t want marketers reaching out, and they don’t want interruptive ads displayed while they’re trying to enjoy their favorite podcast or show.
A good inbound marketing strategy is becoming the go-to way for brands and small businesses to reach their target audience without pushing their product or service in their face. Not only that, but it costs considerably less to acquire new inbound leads than outbound leads.
These strategies make you attractive to customers because they don’t make people feel like they’re being sold to. The content provided by inbound marketing is informative and entertaining.
When done correctly, inbound marketing can return dramatically better results than traditional marketing that disrupts prospects rather than giving them an open invitation to engage.
What Is Inbound Marketing?
When a target audience sees your content and decides it’s worth engaging with, they feel like they’re buying from you because of their own choices, not because your brand was forced onto them.
This is precisely how inbound marketing works.
Inbound marketing is a strategy of drawing your customers in rather than outwardly pushing a brand. HelloFresh and Moz are two incredible social media inbound marketing examples as they focus their marketing efforts by offering discounts, free resources, and tutorials.
They have their audience thinking, "if I get all this information without being a customer, imagine what I could learn if I become one."
Inbound marketing is an excellent choice for small businesses as it helps grow your brand awareness and community through content creation and personalized content.
How inbound marketing works is by attracting the right kind of audience at the right time. Knowing your customer's buyer personas and customer journey is key to a successful inbound marketing strategy.
Top Three Inbound Marketing Strategies
The biggest reason why inbound marketing strategies are effective is “pull power.” Instead of advertising to the customer, as traditional outbound marketing does, inbound marketing focuses on creating reasons for the customer to come to you.
There are four major steps when it comes to inbound marketing:
It begins with evaluating the current status of your marketing efforts and finding places you could improve or expand.
Next is knowing and understanding what defines a potential customer for your business.
The third is creating content to target that specific buyer persona.
Then positioning the content so that it reaches them.
Regarding how inbound marketing is consumed, 47% of buyers view and consume at least 3 to 4 pieces of content before deciding to speak with a sales team member, so don’t be discouraged if your strategies don’t receive immediate results.
Here are three inbound marketing strategies small businesses can use to help grow their brand awareness and increase their sales:
Blogging
Blogging is a critical piece of the ‘attract’ phase of an inbound marketing strategy. Blogging is the best way to attract your target audience to you or your business through search engines. On average, 82% of marketers who blog see positive ROI from their inbound marketing.
To cut through the traffic and noise and get found by the right audience, you must develop informative content that addresses the pain points and questions.
The first step is to audit your current blogs and break them into pillars or sections. Your page should make it easy for your audience to find the exact type of content they're looking for.
Guest posting is also a great tool to use in your inbound marketing strategy in that it can impact nearly every other aspect of your marketing plan. Guest posting can provide backlinks to your site, create brand authority, and build relationships with niche influencers.
We also recommend offering free resources and discounts in your blog and turning them into lead magnets.
Landing Pages
The internet has become so vast that having more than one “front door” into your business is essential.
Landing pages serve as a point of entry into your business other than through your website home page. By creating multiple, personalized landing pages, you have the opportunity to direct potential customers into different pages specifically designed for them and where they are in the buyer’s journey.
Learn how to create a high-converting landing page, here.
Content Personalization
Personalized content is the best way to reach your audience on a personal level at the exact buyer’s stage they’re in. According to Accenture, 91% of consumers say they are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations relevant to them.
Examples of personalization can include sending out a thank you email when a lead downloads educational content—or sending out relevant content when a lead clicks through to a particular landing page or interacts with a specific CTA.
Other triggers include high activity or inactivity, completing a purchase, or signing up for a newsletter. Personalizing content based on triggers can lead to higher conversion rates.
Just look at these other content personalization statistics to see why it's one of the most important aspects of how inbound marketing works:
Why Is Social Media an Important Part of Inbound Marketing?
Content marketing is the fuel for any successful inbound program, and social media is the ultimate content marketing vehicle!
Social media allows you to stay connected to consumers. A solid social media presence drives traffic to your blog posts, sends traffic straight to your landing pages, and is all about personalized content for your specific audience.
Moreover, the messaging and positioning aspects of these platforms allow you to interact with potential customers and act as an excellent opportunity to get to know your target audience better. Interested consumers can contact representatives of your company on social media to ask any questions they can’t find the answer to online.
If you need help to create a marketing strategy based on social media platforms, we have a great blog available with the information you need to beat any algorithm and get you seen by your audience.
Inbound Marketing Funnel
Inbound Marketing Is a Necessity in 2021
As we stated before, a solid inbound marketing strategy can send you the exact type of leads you’re searching for without disrupting their life.
When audiences feel like they discovered you rather than you pushing your brand onto them, they’re more likely to show themselves down the marketing funnel and become loyal consumers.
When nobody wants to feel sold to, inbound marketing is almost a must-have when it comes to marketing strategies.
If your small business needs landing pages created for your upcoming inbound marketing strategy, look no further than Zoek Web Design services! We offer landing pages and graphic design services for every size of business and every type of industry.
Kellyann Doyle is a Content Marketing Writer at Zoek, an SEO, Web Design, and Digital Marketing Agency that assists small and medium-sized businesses with their online footprint. She earned her Bachelor's Degree in 2013 from the University of Houston with a Major in Communications and a Minor in Marketing and has been working in the Digital Marketing world ever since. When not working, you can find Kellyann trying new recipes, enjoying a good nap, or watching Friends for the 500th time.
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