What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound Marketing is defined as a set of non-intrusive strategies (Content marketing, blogging, lead generation, presence on social networks, SEO positioning, etc.) to draw customers to websites, blogs, social networks, etc., thanks to constantly generating high-quality content and offering direct and productive interaction with the user to resolve possible questions and issues.

In general terms, Inbound Marketing is known as “Attraction Marketing” because it seduces the customer and creates rapport with them, so they do not feel as if the ultimate goal of the website is to sell something. This kind of marketing, in turn, uses SEO techniques that allow the site to be positioned in the search engines so it has more and better traffic generating many more sales.

At the same time, Inbound Marketing is tasked with satisfying the customer, seeing that they are happy and in tune with the site they are visiting. The idea is that the user feels as if they arrived at the right place to find the information they need.

What is the main goal of Inbound Marketing?

The main goal of Inbound Marketing is to attract customers indirectly, displaying enjoyable contents and supplying relevant information for the user.

With this we can say that the process of attracting clients is related directly to that of increasing traffic to the website. This traffic leads to various users filling in forms and becoming customers, producing an increase in the site’s standing.

Strategies that use Inbound Marketing

Evolution is nothing other than the process of adapting to change, so Inbound Marketing is a response for creating new purchasing processes for products and services. The process encompasses all the decisions from the identification of a need to the purchase of a product or service.

Strategies that use Inbound Marketing Inbound are based on displaying quality content and showing the client what they are looking for (content of any kind: informative, promotional, etc.), so that they can be brought round to making a purchase or buying the service and recommending the company positively. The method behind these strategies is divided into four basic phases… attraction, conversion, education, closing and gaining loyalty.

1. Attract:

The first thing Inbound Marketing does is attract the user. This phase is accomplished thanks to marketing and advertising techniques known as content marketing, which involves being seen on social networks, SEO, etc, to capture and direct the attention of the user to the website you want.

For this phase to be executed efficiently, it is essential that the SEO strategies fit with the content published on the pages of the website so they may be indexed by the search engines.

In this way, this phase works indirectly to increase traffic to a website.

2. Convert:

The second thing that Inbound Marketing does once it has managed to attract the user is to implement techniques and processes to convert this traffic into information on users in order to create a database. In other words, it consists of getting the users’ data in exchange for worthwhile content through the filling in of a simple form.

This means the company has a database of its possible customers and can deal with them less intrusively, keeping in mind what they need.

Some of the formats that are usually used to get this information are checklists or templates, e-books, videos, webinars, etc.

3. Educate:

The third thing that Inbound Marketing does after having obtained users’ data is e-mail them relevant and useful information related to the purchase of a product or service they are carrying out. Other kinds of information can even be sent related to what the user was investigating.

The techniques that companies use nowadays to carry out this phase are known as lead nurturing and lead scoring.

Lead nurturing: Consists of a process to allow the automatic e-mail delivery of personalised information according to the information a specific user provided and what their behaviour has been.

Lead scoring: Consists of measuring and quantifying the likelihood that a user will be persuaded to make a purchase. Said more simply, it measures how certain the buyer’s intention is to purchase a product or service, and in turn manages to identify changes that might happen with potential buyers.

At the same time, strategies to personalise the content and items that make up the website, as well as retargeting strategies, are applied.

It is worth emphasising that thanks to cookies it is possible to track what the user has visited. Gathering this information allows the defining of content, the personalised offers and actions that are going to be implemented for every user who visits the site. You can ensure that a given user comes across relevant, worthwhile information on the internet about what they are looking for.

4. Close & Delight:

The last strategy of Inbound Marketing is the closing phase where a process of Inbound sales begins, which is tasked with improving sales results focussed on guiding the buyer in the search for the product or service they need.

This phase is complemented by the preceding ones because it is through them that customers are kept satisfied with the display of useful information. At the same time a process of gaining loyalty happens where there are users who never become customers for various reasons, but are focussed on what is happening with the company and could become opinion leaders on the internet.

In short, Inbound Marketing works to keep the customer with the company with strategies like cross-selling (offering complementary products), up-selling (offering a better product than the first one purchased) and gaining loyalty. The intention is that the customer comes back to buy or use services, perhaps that they extend it and are satisfied with the content you provided.

Furthermore, the methodology of Inbound Marketing is so broad that it can deal with everything from the customer’s first interaction with the website up to the point at which they say farewell. In the end it is consolidation marketing, a bet on creating an emotional tie and establishing a lasting relationship with the user, hoping that some day they will take the step to become a customer, but that is up to them…