The Process Of Inbound Marketing

 

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a technique for drawing customers to products and services via content marketing , social media marketing, Search engine optimization and branding

Inbound marketing improves customer experince and builds trust by offering potential customers information they value via company sponsored newsletters, blogs and entries on multiple social media platforms.

Compared with outbound marketing, inbound reverses the relationship between company and customer. In fact, while outbound marketing pushes the product through various channels, inbound marketing creates awareness, attracts new customers with channels like blogs, social media, etc.

Process of Inbound Marketing

To work well, inbound marketing needs a precise process that, if respected, provides a competitive advantage compared with outbound marketing. The process is composed of four sequential steps: attract, convert, close, and "delight" in order to obtain more visitors on sites, to speed up conversions and finally increase the number of leads and prospects.

Attract

One of the most important differences between outbound and inbound marketing is the fact that "if classical marketing is betting on those people, inbound is betting on that person". it means that companies using inbound marketing know better which are the people they are talking with. They can do it through buyer personas. The buyer personas are the identikit of our ideal customers. Only through them can a company know which is their ideal target and which channels they have to use to reach it. "Attract" does not mean attracting random people; companies want to attract the right people at the right time with the right content. Building a company on the buyer personas, one can define which are the beliefs, pains, hobbies, goals, etc. of our customer and on their basis, one can create the right contents to attract visitors on one's blog, social, YouTube channel, etc. Evergreen content plays a crucial role in building organic traffic to websites or blogs.

Convert

After attracting the visitor on their website, for example, a company will be ready to convert him/her into prospect gathering his/her contact information. Emails are the most valuable information for an inbound marketer. The inbound marketer wants to attract the right visitor, so they will exchange a tutorial video, an ebook or something valuable for the customer so he/she will be glad to give his/her e-mail in return.

Close

Once the needed information is gathered, it is important to stay in contact with the prospects. How are prospects transformed into customers? Some helpful tools are:

Email integrated with call-to-action

Call To Actions are very useful to let customer complete an action that we like. With this powerful tool we can generate a positive cycle that generates value both for our customer and for us. Generating useful contents and sending it periodically to our prospect we can create awareness but also build trust and make our close-customer be ready to buy something.

Customer-relationship management

Customer Relationship Management(CRM) systems track the various steps of customer acquisition. Taking track of information regarding the customer, partner companies etc. it is possible to deliver the right message at the right time to the right person.

Smarketing reporting

Smarketing is a mix of sales and marketing. Generally, in big companies, they are two separate units, but they are usually mixed in inbound marketing to have complete and entirely understandable information between the two areas. With closed-loop reports, sales and marketing departments know which is the right time to close a deal with the customer and know if the customer is ready to be acquired.

Nurturing automation

Through the process of nurturing, companies make the customer ready to be acquired.

For example, if the visitor fills a form to download an ebook on a certain site, the company knows that their prospect is interested in the subject treated in the ebook. After collecting this information, they are ready to "nurture" their future probable customer with a series of emails, videos etc. connected with the subject he/she is interested in.

Delight

After attracting the fan, converting him into prospect, and letting him buy something from the company, the company has to keep in touch with their customer, continuing providing good and valuable contents with the hope of doing some upselling.

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