Previously, to make themselves known, companies “harassed” individuals by drowning newsletters, ads and SMS. Today, marketing techniques have evolved with the development of digital. Outbound marketing has given way to inbound marketing. In contrast to Outbound, Inbound marketing tries to attract the consumer to the company, using several levers and arousing his curiosity.
Inbound Marketing VS Outbound Marketing
First of all, Inbound Marketing means Inbound Marketing, it’s attracting the consumer to the business. It is considered a modern marketing technique.
Inbound marketing gives rise to a strategy of content marketing, that is to say, the creation of content on the internet.
It can be several techniques such as:
- Communication with Internet users
- Publication on social networks
- SEO
- Blogging
- Storytelling (Storytelling as part of an advertising communication strategy)
Outbound Marketing means Outbound Marketing, it’s the fact of going out to the consumer. It is a rather traditional step.
- There is no real contact between the prospect and the brand
- Mass distribution, the message is not personalized
- Intrusive advertising, which degrades the image of the brand
- Important cost for advertising
- Telephone canvassing
The benefits of Inbound Marketing for your business
Proximity to consumers
Today, consumers do not want to be constantly bothered by ads. On the contrary, they want to be accompanied in their purchasing procedures and be advised of the products. In addition, today’s consumer buys more easily if he has an attachment to the company and its history. Take the case of Apple, this brand has been successful thanks to its storytelling, it tells a story through her keynotes. The consumer buys the product (phone, computer) but also the Apple brand (iPhone, MacBook) and so the story of Apple. The marketing of a new product at an Apple precedes an opening ceremony in order to create an active link with the consumer. Thus, by buying these products, the consumer wants to be part of the history of Apple in this way.
In addition, an Apple customer will be loyal to the brand because it will feel that it has a link with it. In 2017, the consumer wants a brand with which, he feels close, that is what made the success of Apple. But, there are several other techniques of Inbound marketing that can create a proximity to consumers such as the presence on social media or the establishment of events.
Reduced communication costs
In addition to being effective, know that Inbound Marketing can reduce the costs for advertising. In fact, companies are no longer spending a huge budget on advertising campaigns. This is due to the fact that companies now collect as much information as possible about the population they want to target and target only the latter. So there is no mass advertising aimed at a maximum of people who incurs huge expenses. Unlike outbound marketing, which intended a large part of its budget to promote the brand more or less targeted.
The lead acquisition is faster
- By attracting prospects to his website, using a good SEO, social networks and blog.
- With ergonomics and a relevant and targeted message, visitors become customers faster.
According to a study by Hubspot “State Of Inbound”, Inbound marketing generates 54% more leads than outbound marketing.
By which means to be known on the internet with an Inbound Marketing strategy?
Propose relevant content
Make readers want to take an interest in you. To offer quality content, you must first know your target ( who do you want to reach?)
Creation of a blog
This blog will allow you to personify yourself on the market and to distinguish you from the competition by bringing to the Net surfers to your own vision. Blog promotion is also must after it so that your website gets the organic traffic after its promotion and it also helps to increase your ranking.
Presence on social networks
The image of your company and its e-reputation are built on social networks. You can share your values and your story. Social media is the important marketing tools these days.
Optimizing your SEO
Boost your SEO goes through quality content that must be visible to users. You must use relevant keywords in your texts, external links that will be redirected to your site, called backlinks, but also internal links.
7 Inbound Marketing Trends you need to follow
Let’s discuss the latest trends of inbound marketing one by one:
1. Integrated Marketing Automation Platform
Most of the people already heard about it. Marketing Automation makes your life so much easier by automating your repetitive marketing tasks like email, social media, and other marketing actions. But much of marketers use different automation tools for various platforms. In this case, we can consider using a buffer for Social Media, Mailchimp for Emails, Ahrefs for SEO, etc. You can easily do SEO, Emails, Social Media Management, Blogging, Monitoring, Tracking, Reporting design etc. through one portal only with the help of an integrated marketing automation platform. It helps to save your valuable time but enables you to do marketing on one platform. Thus you can save your data in one place. This brings more control over your overall marketing efforts and allows you to calculate the ROI for every activity with measurable metrics.
2. Guest Blogging Via PR
There is no shred of doubt in it that guest blogging works amazingly these days. It helps to bring a massive organic traffic and Inbound leads that are sales-ready. But, the reality is, original way of guest posting is overused and underperforming. Most of the digital marketing companies are doing guest posting as an SEO practice with the aim to generate more backlinks. However, the results are not very fruitful, since getting the maximum number of backlinks is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to get quality traffic from those backlinks and drive more sales. Here is how you can do it. Google recognizes such backlinks from high authority websites and adds value to the site for which backlink has been given. So here is how it works:
- Write an insightful article resonating with your buyer persona Implement.
- The best SEO practices.
- Leverage PR to get the article published on high authority websites relevant to your industry.
3. Quora
As we all know, there are numbers of platforms available for the promotion of social media and it’s a challenging for a marketer to decide which channel produce the effect and amazing results. If you talk about B2B organic leads, then the best platforms will be:
Quora – For generating bottom of the funnel leads
LinkedIn – For generating middle of the funnel leads
In the past six months, it is observed that 5% of the conversion rate from Quora. Quora has to offer various unique features to its users instead of its user-friendly platform and community. It shares the features of the two most popular social applications and interestingly combines them.
4. Technical SEO
When we talk about the SEO, all the digital marketing agencies are aware of it. But, traditional SEO is not going to get you the full-fledged results you are looking for. To start with, SEO is of three types:
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
- Technical SEO
Traditional SEO techniques of implementing On page SEO and Off page SEO have been well adapted by almost all the digital companies. However, the technical SEO is mostly taken for granted. Technical SEO is the pivot of all your SEO efforts. Let’s have a look at what all comes in Technical SEO:
- Indexing – Make sure that all of your pages are indexed properly by Google. Prevent indexation of no value pages.
- Crawlability – Make sure that all your resources like CSS and Javascript are crawlable.
- Broken Links – Fix all the links.
- Site Map-Keep your sitemap updated and make sure to register it on the Google Search Console.
- Page Speed- Page speed is Google’s top priority and an important factor that affects your rankings.
- Responsiveness: make sure that all your sites are responsive on a different platform like mobile, tablet, desktop etc.
Make sure that your site is technically perfect to get significant traffic boosts for it is the crucial foundation of top search engine rankings.
Final Thoughts
Inbound Marketing has become indispensable today. We can consider that it is the evolution of outbound marketing. Today, the consumer needs to feel unique and this technique highlights the personalization of the purchasing process. In addition, individuals prefer brands with which they feel particularly close and through which they recognize themselves. All this is inbound marketing. So, it is necessary to use this technique to benefit from an economic gain and a considerable saving of time.
Inbound marketing is not easy to set up because it requires the implementation of a content strategy and the choice of communication vectors adapted to each activity. Technical skills in web marketing and digital solutions are also required. It is sometimes preferable to entrust this task to a specialized web agency.
