Inbound Marketing: How Does It Work?

Inbound marketing is a holistic approach that helps prospects convert into customers through your sales and marketing channels. Inbound marketing can be scaled to make your digital channels a 24/7 salesperson who constantly brings in new prospects for your sales team and engages with existing customers. In simple terms, it is the process of helping potential customers find your company. This frequently happens before the customer is ready to make a purchase, but making contact early can turn into brand preference and leads and revenue. Inbound marketing is a strategy that utilizes many forms of pull marketing—content marketing, blogs, events, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, and more—to create brand awareness and attract new business. Whereas outbound marketing seeks out customers, inbound marketing focuses on visibility, so potential buyers come to you. Instead of “renting attention,” companies employing inbound marketing focus on new methods geared toward building awareness, developing relationships, and generating leads.

These methods make you attractive to customers because they don’t make people feel like they’re being sold. The content provided by inbound marketing is educational, entertaining, and welcomed by consumers. When done correctly, inbound marketing can return dramatically better results than traditional marketing that disrupts prospects rather than giving them an open invitation to engage. 

Inbound marketing can be a great tool for your company if used correctly.

• Attract the right prospects for your company by creating qualified leads.
• Build inbound and social media links to help drive brand growth.
• Allow prospects to find you by using search engine optimization. Use unique content that you create and share through your digital channels.
• Turn prospects into qualified leads for your sales team.
• Allow customers to communicate with you whenever and wherever they are most convenient. This will increase customer retention.
• Make your brand promise and influence customers’ future purchases based on their experiences with your company.

Prospects are empowered and consume content faster than ever before. Organizations must ensure that all channels are covered in their content marketing efforts. Prospects will visit many digital platforms to find the right information. Your company must be accessible and active on these channels to answer prospects’ questions and connect with them when and where they are most convenient. Marketing departments are shifting to inbound marketing because it gives the consumer power. To help your buyers make informed decisions, think about the following:

Inbound marketing is a strategy that aims to achieve three things for organizations.

• Attract qualified prospects to your company.
• Connect with prospects in a meaningful, scalable manner
• Treat your customers and prospects so that they become brand advocates

Tip: To learn more about the Attract and Engage stages of inbound marketing, visit the blog posts.

These three stages allow marketers and business owners to build brand loyalty and ongoing engagement with prospects and customers. You can use many tactics and tools to engage prospects and customers at these stages. Your primary goal is to guide prospects through the buyer’s journey to assist them in making the right decision to become loyal customers.