What is Inbound marketing and what is it for

This term was born in 2005, as a methodology that uses marketing and advertising actions to capture the attention of users from the beginning of their purchase process, and continues to inform them and provide them with valuable content at each stage of the purchase until it is completed, and its great virtue is that it does so in a non-intrusive way. This eliminates annoying and irrelevant advertising for the customer, leaving them to consume the content according to their needs, always on their own initiative, which is very positive for later loyalty. Interesting, isn’t it? Now that you know about Inbound marketing, what it is and what it is for, you will see how this great methodology can help you.

The most commonly used techniques are SEO, content marketing, social media, web analytics, lead generation, and culminates with customer loyalty techniques.

What is Inbound Marketing for?

The digital environment is advancing very quickly, and along with it all the habits it generates in people. Nowadays people no longer buy as they used to, so the techniques that used to be used have become obsolete, such as continuous and annoying cold calls on the phone, or advertising at exorbitant prices, with the added factor of not being able to accurately measure the return on the investment made.

In short, these more traditional opposite strategies, in which the company is the one who approaches the customers, have taken a back seat, being called Outbound marketing.

It is not a simple technique and for it to be applied in a digital project, it must have a solid foundation, a good team and be aware of what it entails. To analyse what inbound marketing is and what it is for, we must bear in mind that it has a very positive impact (if it is developed properly). In addition to helping the customer’s entire purchasing process, it generates assets for the company, as part of these actions create elements that last on the web, have value and offer a return. Among its advantages we can highlight the following:

• More than an expense, it is perceived as an investment, since the contents that are consumed remain on our website, and represent an absolute return on investment, not like an advertising campaign that represents an expense.
• It forces us to generate content that is of interest and useful to the user. This is not only an advantage for users, as they find what they are looking for. It is a benefit when it comes to positioning in a search engine.
• Increased visits to the website, through organic and direct channels, independently of the means of payment.
• It is not intrusive and works to attract visitors by offering valuable content. Therefore, users who arrive at your website from this type of content will not feel that they are being attracted with the purpose of converting them into customers.
• User segmentation is at the heart of this technique. Understanding where the user is in the relationship process with the service, product or market is the
• It is a type of marketing that can be measured perfectly, therefore, it allows constant optimisation dynamics to be generated.
• Increasing leads or registrations, where by implementing automated marketing mechanisms we can optimise the process in such a way that we ensure the achievement of objectives and obtain quality contacts.
• Creation of a good database of qualified contacts, which will grow over time and allow us to offer more personalised information.
• Increased reach and visibility, where thanks to the company’s content it can be positioned as an expert in a certain sector, which will reach a larger number of customers interested in it, helping to create a community around the
• It allows a high degree of automation (such as email marketing or publication in networks). Once the actions and tactics to be developed have been defined, very good results can be achieved with minimal effort.

 

The Inbound Marketing strategy

We already know what inbound marketing means and all the advantages it can bring us, but how does the inbound strategy work? This methodology is based on four main phases, which correspond to the buying process of a user in the digital environment. There will be a first phase in which we will try to generate visibility, another focused on capturing leads, then we have the phase that is aimed at sales, and finally, the phase of customer loyalty.

If we specify a little more, these would be the main steps to follow:

1. Setting out the objectives and creating the buyer persona and buyer journey: This is a way of defining your ideal customer by addressing their needs and thinking about their satisfaction and is made up of any need, motivation or concern that can be solved with the product or service offered. The buyer journey would be all the processes the customer goes through, identifying possible errors or improvements. The questions to make a good buyer persona are: demographics, needs, motivations, behaviours, personal objectives, etc.
2. Attracting traffic: The visits we attract to our website are qualified. What do we mean? Through a good website, with a good presence and usability, with optimised landing pages, the users that come will have more chances of becoming customers. Once we have done this, through SEO campaigns, SEM and social networks we will position and promote content that is attractive and relevant to users.
3. To convert this traffic into customers, we will have to encourage conversion. The objective will be to achieve the highest number of conversions (leads), using forms that allow us to obtain the contact details of our potential customers.
4. Once we have the contact details of potential customers, we focus on getting the sale through email marketing campaigns, trying to facilitate the click with a call to action buttons. Here comes into play a phase with more commercial messages, transmitting good products, testimonials, creating urgency to buy, etc.
5. Finally, once the purchase has been made, it will be necessary to build customer loyalty, establishing a relationship of satisfaction with the customer that lasts over time. These actions can be sending exclusive offers, new products of interest to them, referrals or recommendations with which to give a discount if they bring another person who ends up making a purchase, etc.
6. Once you have thought of everything, by applying automation tools you will be able to attend to a large volume of customers quickly and efficiently.

Inbound marketing in B2B

We will explain in detail some actions that have good results to implement in B2B models with this methodology:

What actions to take to attract traffic:

• Create segmented ads that capture the attention of our target audience (more related to outbound marketing strategies).
• Capture attention by creating relevant content and disseminate it on social networks, blogs or other channels such as video platforms.
• Creating buyer personas and templates for email
• It is also possible to insert a chatbot in the accesses to the website, in which, depending on the doubts or information that are raised to the chat, its programming will refer you to the sales service directly, or will respond to possible questions or doubts of the

What actions to take for education:

• Once we have obtained the leads, we will impact the contacts with newsletters, blog posts, telemarketing, email marketing (focusing on influencing customers).
• A dossier with information about the product or service in a very visual and high-quality It can be a somewhat tedious process, so if you do not have much time, it would be advisable to outsource this step.
• Automate the attention we give to the customer, in this way the customer service will allow us to answer the most technical questions that users have automatically if they are general questions, filtering only the most important or specific to a person (these questions are made by people with a high intention to buy, and may be attended by commercials who can close important deals).

What actions to take for engagement:

• This step could also include the automation mentioned in the previous point, managing the possible sales opportunities that may arise.
• Email marketing actions, although this time in a more personalised way, as we will know what they are interested in and what we can send them.
• Analysis of the funnel or conversion funnel of the contacts or leads, where we will be able to see in which phase of the purchase is the client, and according to this we can send them information or a proposal.
• It is important at this point to perform a lead scoring to know who is educated and interested in your products or services, to quickly direct them to the sales department so that they can promote the sale.
• Analyse the bounce rate or cart abandonment, where it will be necessary to investigate why a customer who was interested in the product did not make the purchase and solve this problem.

What actions to take for the closing stage:

• Email marketing, which will help us to maintain the relationship with customers once they have already bought from us, being able to impact them later with service improvements, different fees or specialised and personal offers.
• Conduct surveys on the service received, to find out possible points of contact where improvements need to be made.

At Orbetec360, we focus on understanding the needs of each digital project to improve its competitiveness. That’s why we work on customised digital strategies.

If you are interested in developing this type of strategy, or if you need more information about inbound marketing, we are happy to help you!