Introduction to Inbound Marketing
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a business strategy that attracts customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them. Inbound marketing forms connections with customers and solves problems they already have.
With the rise of the internet, inbound marketing has changed drastically.
In the past we used to only know if a product existed when someone came and told us about it and all of its features, now we can find out a lot by ourselves. This was a huge benefit for companies. Customers didn't have access to the price of products or services as these were hidden away. The only way to find out the prices was talking to a salesperson.
Today, with more and more information available online, you can often find pricing, product specifics, and comparisons to another competitor without having to talk to a salesperson.
Why Companies are Using Inbound Marketing
Many companies have found that their competitors have started answering the prospects' questions on their website using blogs, articles, ebooks, webinars, and more, therefore, allowing their salesperson to spend more time with those prospects that have already spent the time to learn who they are.
This has allowed for greater sales numbers, more qualified prospects, better-educated customers who aren't expecting the wrong things.
If the above isn't enough, inbound marketing also benefits the prospects. They are able to find answers to their questions thereby allowing your prospects to self-select out if your product isn't the right fit for what they're looking for. It also gives them a better impression of who you are as they didn't have to call or chat with you in order to only find out that they couldn't buy your product after all.
What makes up Inbound Marketing
Here are some tools that you'll utilize as part of the inbound marketing strategy:
- Blogging
- Social Media
- Video
- Lead Generation
- Email Marketing
- Chatbots
- Website
Where to Get Started
If you're currently not doing any Inbound Marketing I'd recommend that you start with the following:
- List out your services on your site, who you do it for etc
- If you have any case studies or testimonials, post these onto your site
- This one can be controversial but I recommend posting your pricing onto your site. There's a whole chapter in a book below that I recommend that goes over this concept specifically.
Additional Resources:
Hubspot Inbound Marketing Course
Book: They Ask You Answer