Inbound marketing refers to any marketing that's based on creating valuable content to attract new leads. Customers looking for solutions will then find that content and consume it voluntarily.
Why Is Inbound Marketing Important?
There's a reason why print, radio, and TV are becoming things of the past.
We have all had enough of the long advertisements on TV and radio. And there isn't a single person on earth that hadn't left a website due to the annoying popup ads it displayed.
People have changed with the internet - and so did their psychology.
Human beings love to be masters of their own destinies. They want to find specific answers to their questions - and do it quickly.
That's what gained inbound marketing extreme popularity. It gives users full control of what to consume and for how long. And it helps them find precise answers in the form they prefer.
Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is the opposite of outbound marketing, where businesses compete for the attraction of buyers. And that's often done through advertisements and promotions.
For instance, this glossary entry is a form of inbound marketing.
We wrote this entry to help you understand what inbound marketing is. You probably found it by searching for phrases related to "Inbound Marketing". And now you're consuming it to learn more about the subject.
Stages Of Inbound Marketing
There's often a misunderstanding when it comes to what inbound marketing is and isn't. Depending on the customer, inbound marketing can be broken down into three stages:
1. Awareness
Awareness begins with people trying to learn the basics or finding answers.
The first place we all go to when looking for solutions is a search engine. So, the content you create here needs to be well optimised for SEO.
The goal with the type of content isn't to be sales-y and promote any products or services. It's more directed towards attracting news leads and getting them to convert.
Some prospects may show interest in your offers, but that doesn't mean they're ready to buy. That's why you need to create content that engages them on a deeper level.
The question is no longer - why should I use this?
But more about - why should I buy from you?
At this stage, the goal is to build trust, show your expertise, and familiarise people with your brand. If your leads are still hesitating to take action, show them why it's the right thing to do through content.
Types of content that work at this stage:
Podcasts
Whitepapers
Ebooks
Webinars
3. Action
Action is the last stage of any sales funnel. And it often ends with a qualified prospect making a final decision to close the deal.
Prospects at this stage are already familiar with your brand. So, any content you create can work here. But, you need to be sure that what you're offering is getting them closer to the purchase decision.
Case Studies
Free Trials
Frequently Asked Questions Pages
Product Reviews
Live Demos
Inbound Marketing Tools
Using the right tools in any process will make your life easier. Inbound marketing is no different.
There are a some great tools that can help you with different aspects of your inbound marketing process.
Canva is a great inbound marketing tool, and it provides features that make it easy for people without design expertise to create eye-catching visual content. You can generate designs for blog articles, social media, and online presentations; with over 610,000 free and premium templates to help you get started.
There’s a collection of design elements and easy-to-use features, and businesses can incorporate logos, campaign colours, and fonts. Additionally, Canva provides access to over 100 million stock photos, audios, videos, and graphics.
Grammarly is a writing assistant that uses artificial intelligence to review grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes. The software also provides features to improve clarity, engagement, and delivery.
Businesses can add a style guide to help team members maintain a consistent tone and writing style. Conversely, individual users can choose between eight different tones of voice, three levels of writing formality, and six target audience domains.
An effective inbound marketing strategy requires a lot of written communications, and Grammarly helps you create error-free content that is optimised for your ideal customer profile.
SEMRush SEO Writing Assistant is an essential inbound marketing tool for companies that want to rank on Google. It helps you create content that is original, optimised for search engines, and has the right tone of voice.
Each piece of content is compared to similar articles from your top 10 rivals. Subsequently, the software provides recommendations on what you can do to create better content and outrank top competitors.
Users also get a list of semantically linked keywords that help fulfill search intent, tips to avoid keyword stuffing, and warnings if links are broken.
Crowdfire is a social media management software with qualities that make it ideal for an effective inbound marketing strategy. Businesses get content curation tips, including a list of articles and images that their target audience may find valuable and engaging.
The tool also lets users schedule social media posts and send them out at a predetermined time, with an automatic customisation feature that tailors each post to the unique needs of the platform.
Crowdfire provides a means to track mentions, add RSS feeds, and collect reports that highlight performance across all social media networks.
SocialPilot is a social media scheduling, inbound marketing, and analytics tool. You can connect over 75 social media accounts and send out posts from one unified dashboard.
Users may also add contributors and manage a team, assigning roles to create a pecking order and enhance collaboration. There’s a social inbox that collates all Facebook mentions, comments, and messages, making it easier to stay on top of conversations in real-time.
Furthermore, Users can schedule up to 500 posts for the future, and SocialPilot provides in-depth analytics to track performance across multiple platforms.
Landing pages are an important part of any inbound marketing strategy, and Unbounce is one of the most prominent landing page tools for marketing teams.
The software’s Smart Builder simplifies landing page design, providing recommendations on which layouts and page elements will deliver optimal results based on your target audience.
Users can also generate, rewrite, and expand marketing content using the AI-powered Smart Copy feature, with a collection of 45 ready-made templates to start with. Additionally, Smart Traffic analyses your audience and automatically sends new visitors to the landing page that’s most likely to convert them.
Lucky Orange is a heatmap and analytics solution that tracks visitors, providing businesses with insight into how users behave on their websites. You can record visitor sessions or watch in real-time as they navigate your site.
See which pages your prospects visited, which actions they took, and the bottlenecks that stopped them from making a purchase.
Businesses can also collect heatmap analytics to assess which parts of a page users spent the most time on, evaluate form metrics to pinpoint optimization opportunities, and create multiple dashboards to track important marketing indicators.
Constant Contact is a marketing software for businesses that want to keep their audience engaged and nurture prospects via email. The platform comes with a smart drag-and-drop editor to help users design beautiful and personalised emails.
You can create funnels and campaigns, scheduling emails that go out at a certain time or when a subscriber takes an action. Constant Contact lets businesses upload contact lists from a website, social media, Excel, Outlook, or Salesforce. And there are tools to help users track email performance in real-time.
GetResponse is a marketing platform that facilitates the creation, design, and transmission of emails and email-based funnels. Users get automation tools to build action-based messages and set up triggers.
There’s an autoresponder feature to help businesses stay in touch with customers and a library of free templates (and stock images) to simplify email design and customization.
You can also carry out A/B tests to measure how different factors affect your email marketing efforts, and ensure that your messages are delivered at the optimal time using Perfect Timing.
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