The simplest explanation for inbound marketing is that it's an online marketing technique which uses keywords and quality content to target your ideal customers and get them to your website from organic search. It's a method of online marketing which brings the customers searching for products in your industry to you instead of the traditional, and often ineffective, outbound techniques like cold calling, mass advertisements, and buying emails lists.
Inbound marketing is made up of four activities represented by the graphic above. The four activities are attracting customers, converting them, closing on them, and delighting them into promoters. We'll go into detail about how each activity works in the section below.
It's important that you're getting the right kind of traffic to your site. You want visitors to become leads, and ultimately satisfied customers. Find the right kind of customer by creating a "Buyer Persona(s)." A Buyer Persona includes the goals, challenges, and demographic information of your perfect customer. Once developed, you have a customer to "talk" to directly.
Blogs that engage your customers are the single best way to get new visitors to your site. Blogging gives valuable information to your visitors and boosts search engine rankings.
The more your content is shared, the more people will visit your website. Social media also allows you to stay in touch with clients and builds authority and trust.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) structures your website to easily be recognized by search engines like Google and Bing. Good SEO targets keywords that your customers use the most, allowing your website to rank higher and will ultimately lead to be found easier on search engines.
Your website needs to speak to your clients and it should be filled with helpful information.
Once you have a healthy amount of visitors, you need to turn them into leads by gaining their contact information. Contact information is the single most important commodity for an internet marketer. It allows you to reconnect with customers and delight them with website content they'll find useful.
These are the buttons and/or links that urge your visitors to take action. This can be to download a white paper, fill out a form, or sign up for an email list.
This is where a call-to-action leads, and is a form where a visitor can submit information. These are attractive pages that allow you to offer a lead something visitors find useful in exchange for their contact information.
Forms are where visitors input their contact information which is then sent to you.
These are all the leads you have in your database and includes the important information regarding your contacts, such as how they found your website and which pages they visited.
This is what it's all about- transitioning your website visitors into satisfied customers.
Inbound marketing ranks sale-readiness with a number so you know which leads are ready to be sold to. This helps you take the guesswork out of the process.
Email marketing campaigns are a way to reengage leads or customers and offer more enticing materials, such as downloads. This content builds respect and trust.
Lead nurturing must be tailored to the needs of certain kinds of Buyer Personas. Customers that download your white paper might need different email content than someone who follows your company on Twitter.
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system lets you analyze data, which allows you to determine which marketing strategies work best for bringing customers to you and allows you to focus on and improve upon those strategies in the future.
Inbound Marketing is an ongoing process, and just because someone has purchased a product does not mean you should stop delivering superb content.
Avoid sales language and present different users with a variety of opportunities they may be interested in.
Social outlets like Facebook and Twitter allow your company to provide real-time customer service and real-time conversation with your customers to connect.
Remarkable content can help you find new customers, retain existing ones, and keep both informed on new products and promotions.
