Inbound marketing is a business methodology that focuses on attracting customers through relevant and helpful content, as opposed to traditional outbound marketing methods like cold calling, direct mail, or interruptive advertising, which are dying methods anyhow. Inbound marketing strategies aim to draw potential customers in by providing valuable content tailored to their needs and interests, thereby building trust and credibility for a brand. If you are have not heard about EEAT in SEO, now may be the opportune time to introduce you to this valuable term. E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness and is part of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines—the handbook that real people use to evaluate the quality of search results and is an important factor in SEO, and therefore in your Inboud Marketing strategy.
The inbound methodology can be applied in three ways:
- Attract potential customers: attract the right customer persona type through valuable content and meaningful dialogues that position you as a trusted advisor.
- Engage and interact with your potential customers by offering perspectives and solutions that resonate with their challenges and objectives, so they are more likely to buy from you.
- Delight your customers with extended assistance and support to enable them to achieve success with your product or service.
Key components of inbound marketing applied to this three pronged approach include
Attracting Strategies
- Content Creation: Creating valuable, relevant, and engaging content such as blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts, social media posts, etc., that address the needs and interests of the target audience.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Optimizing content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) so that it’s more easily discoverable by potential customers.
- Social Media Marketing: Utilizing social media platforms to distribute content, engage with followers, and build relationships with the target audience.
Tools that can help with the execution of Attracting Strategies
Rank Math is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plugin for WordPress that makes it easy for anyone to optimize their content with built-in suggestions based on widely-accepted best practices, thus helping your website rank higher by making it SEO-friendly and your content worthy of featured Position in Google search.
Metricool is a powerful all-in-one social media management tool with the objective to make the life of social media managers easier when managing, measuring, and scheduling the social media content.
Engaging Strategies
- Website Chatbots: Chatbots can qualify leads by asking targeted questions and directing them to relevant resources or a person to talk to, potentially increasing conversion rates.
- Email Marketing: Sending personalized and targeted emails to nurture leads and maintain communication with existing customers.
- Inbound Sales Calls: The phone calls initiated by the customer or prospect who is responding to a your marketing efforts or seeking assistance, information, or support. This is a valuable opportunity for you to engage with customers / prospects directly, address their needs or concerns, provide information about the solution you are offering. (use the word “solution” ratthern than “product”).
- Marketing Automation: Using software tools to automate follow-up with the prospect, and other lead and marketing tasks.
Tools that can help with the execution of Engaging Strategies
GoHighLevel is a comprehensive marketing and business management platform designed to streamline various aspects of running a business. It offers a wide range of tools including CRM, email marketing, SMS marketing, website building, funnel creation, appointment scheduling, and more. GoHighLevel aims to simplify marketing and business operations for small businesses by providing an all-in-one solution to manage and automate their workflows effectively.
Systeme.io is a comprehensive marketing solution designed to assist businesses in crafting and deploying various marketing strategies such as sales funnels, email marketing, online courses, blogs, websites, affiliate programs, to name a few. Through this platform, marketers can seamlessly capture leads, implement rules, automate email sequences, and sit and relax while Systeme.io is running a a business for them.
Delighting Strategies
- Feedback Loop: Incorporate chatbots and surveys in your communication with customers and to request feedback on your product or service (or rather the solution you provided them with). This will not only delight your customers, but give you the opportunity to apply consumer insight and improve your solution.
- Customer Surveying: Send out well-timed customer satisfaction surveys and utilize the voice of the customer to idenitfy negative themes in your sevice so that you can work on resolving them.
- Social Listening: Engaging in social media listening proves crucial in ensuring customer satisfaction. Your social media audience may utilize your platforms to provide feedback, pose inquiries, or relay their experiences regarding your products or services. Promptly respond to these engagements with informative and supportivemessages that resonate with your followers.
Tools that can help with the execution of Delighting Strategies
MeetEdgar is a simple, easy-to-learn tool that helps small businesses and social media teams create, schedule, publish and automate content daily. Edgar offers unlimited scheduled posts, so evergreen content automated publishing and can automatically generate social updates from external links. Good yet affordable social media management solution!
HubSpot is a platform that offers everything small businesses need to deliver a best-in-class customer experience into one place. It's collection of capabilities consist of Marketing, Sales, Service, CMS & Operations hubs that are designed to help you grow your web presence and yoru business. Free to get started!
Overall, inbound marketing focuses on providing value to customers at every stage of their journey, from awareness to purchase and beyond, with the ultimate goal of building long-term relationships and driving business growth.
