What is Inbound Marketing?

Whether you are climbing the ladder at work, starting your own business, or growing your company, learning marketing strategies will take your career and your company to the next level. Everyone wants to know how to grow their business, but oftentimes companies rely on old methods such as the “spray and pray method” to hope something sticks in the audience or push messages in front of the customer through noisy advertisements.

In the post-covid world, however, people want to support companies that they can trust. Customers are more willing than ever to become an ambassador for their favorite brands, which is all a part of inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing is a business method to attract customers by creating valuable content and experiences. While outbound marketing interrupts the audience with content they often do not want, inbound marketing focuses on creating connections. Inbound marketing creates growth through attracting, engaging, and creating delight for customers.

Attract a prospect

The first step of inbound marketing is attracting the customer. Instead of pushing marketing onto your customers, begin by offering your unique value proposition by creating and publishing helpful content. By offering valuable content in blogs, social media posts, and testimonials, you provide value that will draw your target audience in.

But how does your audience know where your content is? SEO tactics are the key. By including keywords into your content, your company will rise to the top of google searches, naturally increasing your customer base. For instance, consider this blog. We have sprinkled the words “inbound marketing” throughout this post to create a higher score on SEO. Consider adding keywords that your target audience would google, and begin including those in your content. This practice will help increase your SEO, which will help your online visibility, naturally increasing your brand awareness and trust.

Engage your audience

Building your customer base is a long-term marathon, not a sprint. After you have initially attracted your target audience, it is vital to keep your audience engaged. While sparking interest in new customers is important, retaining them requires relationships. To build a relationship with your newfound customers, connect with them with a personalized touch, provide excellent customer service, and always sell solutions to their problems rather than just products.

Everyone wants to be seen as an individual and not just a paycheck provider, so engage with your customer on a personalized basis to build engagement with them. This can be through personalized thank-you emails, using their name in a customer-service phone call, and training your employees to be genuinely interested in the customer’s needs. This will help you develop lasting relationships with your customers for long-term customer satisfaction. Engaging with your customers using inbound marketing tacts helps make natural brand ambassadors out of your customer, enabling them to share your brand with their world. It may take what seems like more time at first but will have a greater impact long term.

Delight your customer

Once you have intrigued and built a relationship with your customer using inbound marketing tactics, the last step is to ensure that the customer is happy and satisfied with your service or product. If you are lucky, the customer may become an ambassador for your company, driving more customers your way.

Some great ways to delight your customers is through social media listening, assisting your customers through any purchasing or product complications, and sending out satisfaction surveys. One example of how to do this is through using chatbots to gain feedback and assist with any needs. Another example would be actively responding to your customer’s responses on social media. This is especially crucial if you are asking them questions on social media, inviting a response. Any response the customer provides should be met with a response that is not autogenerated, even complaints. Remember, the goal is to help the customer in their needs, which enables you to gain the trust and loyalty of customers.

Join us in the journey

These are just a few examples of what the method of inbound marketing is and how it works. Overall, the most important thing to remember when practicing inbound marketing tactics is to place your customer at the center. Often companies can become lost in selling a product and forget why their company is selling products. Only when your customer feels cared for will they become willing ambassadors and loyalists for your brand. This will take time but is worth the return in the end.

Over the next several weeks, here at Bridge Leadership, we will continue to dive into inbound marketing best practices, key concepts, and current trends to help you grow your business. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us through our email or social media.

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About:

Bridge Leadership is a consulting company that exists to bridge the gap between companies and their target audience through inbound marketing thought leadership. Run by Boyce College students Ana Lee, Lara Tanner, Maddie Gardner, and Cassidy Cornett, this company is created by students for a class group project.