Inbound Marketing plays a fundamental role when it comes to attracting the audience to a service, product or brand. Content marketing has a series of benefits and advantages that, applied according to its strategies, can significantly boost the sales of your business and convert a user into a potential client that generates an organic portfolio for your company.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound Marketing is a digital marketing resource that encompasses different techniques, which far from being intrusive, seek to capture the attention of valuable customers who can grow your sales or reach. Among the techniques that this strategy uses are SEO, lead generation, email marketing and presence in social networks.
As users, we have often felt saturated or forced to consume a product or content that we are not necessarily interested in, and this is because many use a type of marketing that, instead of attracting, invades or interrupts. Inbound Marketing , on the other hand, is designed so that the user is the one who voluntarily becomes interested in your product or brand.
Nor is it about inserting "misleading advertising" into your strategy, on the contrary, Inbound Marketing has the purpose of being very clear from the beginning with what is offered and doing a study on the audience, in order to find that ideal person for your service or content. After that, this “ideal person” will be able to access your content whenever and however they want, adapting to what they need.
It is necessary to define who your buyer persona is for your marketing strategy to give positive results. The term is related to that potential client or "ideal client" profile, which perfectly matches the type of product or service that your company or brand offers. For this, it is necessary to collect data, relationships, behavior as a user and specify the relationship that can be created between your service and this potential client.
Defining your buyer persona is vital, because in this way you can direct your actions to a consumer or audience that you really know; this will make your strategy more attractive or attractive, which will not only make your marketing work more effective, but can even save you time, money and energy.
You have probably also heard the term “target” and it is important to know that it is not the same as a buyer persona. Although both have a basically similar concept, they have differences that must be taken into account, so that inbound marketing is executed effectively and fulfills its purpose.
“Buyer person” is used as a more general or broad concept, while the target is a more specific concept that is based on more exact data, such as gender, age, income, among other more defined information. The target defines aspects, while your buyer persona will define their needs for you.
Having this clear, then it is the perfect time to create your own marketing tactic, using the 4 phases of an Inbound Marketing strategy :
1. Attract
This phase will become a key part, since during this the acquisition process takes place, so that the user is interested in your content and becomes a potential client. This is achieved by attracting attention and generating as much traffic as possible, through SEO techniques or web positioning, content marketing and posts on social networks, in order to filter out customers who are really interested in your service.
Content marketing
Content marketing is the technique that will attract user traffic, using the information you share and that may be relevant to the audience you want to capture. How to know if it will be content that interests them? After defining your buyer persona and making sure that you can provide them with information or content that will make you different and stand out from what they can find elsewhere.
SEO technique
SEO techniques are also used in the attraction phase, since the optimization of the content will be essential for those potential customers to go to where you are. The Search Engine Optimization or (SEO) tool involves the use of keywords that are easy to notice in internet search engines and that your audience or buyer person considers interesting in a specific topic.
Social Marketing
Using social networks to promote your brand or product is a very favorable tool and what we know as Social Marketing is based on this . This is a very important advertising strategy in the first phase of Inbound Marketing , due to all the options they offer to enhance interaction with customers through actions such as following and sharing through their profiles. In this way, it is possible to gain more exposure and flow to your website or social network.
2. Convert
After the customer is within your spectrum and you have significant user traffic, the conversion process will make this unknown a possible customer, by resorting to data collection techniques, forms, surveys or registrations. For this it is necessary to use resources such as landing pages, calls to action, among others; making the information obtained, give an identity to the client and generate a lead or follow-up. This phase allows you to create a follow-up link and relationship.
Call to Action or "call of action"
In the world of marketing, the CTA or call to action consists of a technique of collecting data and information from the user so that they go from anonymity to a possible client for your company. It is a message specially designed to attract the customer and encourage him to do a specific action, such as clicking on a button or banner, a field to enter the email, a button for an instant chat, book a service or buy a product. Make sure to use eye-catching and engaging visuals!
Landing Pages
As we have mentioned, a landing page or "landing page" is an important resource in the conversion phase. It is nothing more than a page within a website, created or designed with the purpose of converting each user who visits your website into a lead or possible client. Generally, the user is taken to that page through a link, button, banner or social network, even from another website, where the brand or company can explain its content or what it is promoting in more detail.
Landing pages or destination pages are usually designed with attractive and specific messages to attract your potential customer, with the main purpose of providing really important information to finalize the purchase of a specific product, or access to your content without distracting them from other data. With the landing page you will attract that potential client to a specific content and not to your company's website as such where they can be distracted from what you want to communicate.
Forms
The use of forms, surveys or registrations is essential during the second phase of Inbound Marketing. Thanks to this tool, information and data can be collected with the user's consent, to give a face to your buyer person and meet their needs. Generally, this option is already used when the potential client is on the landing page.
Users do not always offer their data voluntarily and in exchange for nothing, so for the conversion phase to be successful, it is important to create an attractive offer that makes them feel that the benefit they will receive will be as valuable as the information. staff they are providing. It is key to create forms with clear instructions, an original design, a personal language and at the same time easy to fill out.
3. Close
Once this lead or possible client has created a link with the content, service or product; it is necessary for the user to go from being simply a datum to a definitive client. This step involves automating different techniques such as lead scoring , lead nurturing and the segmentation of the information collected, in order to create a sales and marketing strategy in favor of your brand or company.
CRM or Customer Relationship Management
Also known as "customer relationship management", CRM is a software used in marketing strategies, to manage and maximize data or what is known about a specific customer and in this way, shape their needs. and anticipate satisfying them.
Basically, the CRM is an application in which all the interaction with the client, be it emails, instant messaging, among other "calls to action", is automatically stored creating a record of that client. All the information is segmented and analyzed through this system, which will make it easier to understand customer behavior, how they react to your marketing strategies and even be able to divide the work within the team to improve productivity and internal and external communication.
Marketing automation
Lead scoring and lead nurturing are the key pieces for marketing automation, which will allow all the data and information collected during the first phases of Inbound Marketing to be classified, ordered and prioritized . These techniques make it easy to know which of all those leads or potential customers are most likely to purchase your product, service or content.
Through lead scoring , it is possible to classify those leads based on the highest probabilities of proximity, you can even order them by score and create your own ranking of the most important leads or potential clients or those that best suit what you offer. For its part, lead nurturing , which literally means “lead cultivation”, is the technique in which you should work on these leads, encourage them, attract them and strengthen your relationship with them, so that they are not only attracted to your product or service, but that they acquire it.
4. Loyalty
Probably your marketing strategy will not generate favorable results if you are not consistent with your client. Having loyal customers will require follow-up, keeping them attracted and really turning them into spokespersons for your service or business. For this, it is key to use tools or techniques that make you feel unique; such as discounts, private clubs, memberships, among other options, which can show that it is not just another sale, but a value for the company. This also helps to generate feedback, to use it in favor of the business and apply it to the next clients.
The relationship with the client and your marketing strategy do not end with the sale, so post-sale follow-up is carried out in this phase, so that you can secure your client to your brand and return to your service or content. This phase is extremely important because beyond becoming a loyal buyer of your product or consumer of your service, the idea is that they also become a promoter and an advertising spokesperson for what you have to offer.
In order to achieve this customer loyalty and at the same time become a promoter of your service, it is necessary to measure their satisfaction, know how they perceive your brand and never lose it. This is possible by applying surveys, questionnaires, forums, user communities and even using techniques such as "call to action" so that you can share, recommend and express yourself through social networks.
The results of inbound marketing
Applying the 4 phases of an Inbound Marketing strategy in a specific and focused way will generate many advantages for any business, which can be seen in the short term if the techniques are applied and all the resources are used. Undoubtedly, the set of techniques that this resource implies will allow you to quantify the scope of your content, product or service, measuring visits to the web, registrations (leads) and interaction on social networks.
It is necessary to understand that the success of the application of content marketing will depend on building a client portfolio based on a qualitative and not quantitative acquisition strategy, since the number of users will not determine sales or reach, but rather a number of customers who truly believe in what the company offers.
The most interesting thing about the phases of Inbound Marketing is that they are not limited to a specific type of business, they can be applied in any field, regardless of whether it is a service, e-commerce or content company.
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