This is a guest post by Sneha Rastogi who works at LinkBuildingWorks, and today is going to explain us about inbound marketing technique, how it is different from outbound marketing and how it can help your business. I am sure you will learn something new through this post.
It is a common understanding among all marketers that promotional practices need to be changed according to the prevailing business environment. Still they look out for one such solution that assures to bring customers to them in a consistent manner.
Though there are several forms of marketing but one which has got attention off late and is becoming a topic of discussion is Inbound Marketing. There is so much talk about its potential to attract customers towards a business or brand and leading it to earn profits.
Organizations have started realizing high-efficiency of inbound marketing and some have even adopted it to gain benefits. If it continues to deliver the desired results, Inbound Marketing can expect to find a permanent place in the marketing plan of businesses.
Let us take a closer look at it.
What is Inbound Marketing?
A marketing effort that drives customers to find more about the companies/products or services they are interested in and not the marketers doing all efforts to reach the customers is known as inbound marketing.
It consists of a range of techniques, all of which are focused on attracting customers through relationship building.
Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing
Inbound marketing involves applying those techniques or tools of promotion where customers find the promoter/marketer. This is in sharp contrast to Outbound marketing where marketers try various means (Advertising, telemarketing, direct mail, trade shows, etc) to reach their prospective customers. While OM targets a broad range of audience, the approach of IM is towards specific but qualified customers.
Types of Inbound Marketing
There are different ways of undertaking this kind of marketing which include:
Blog – A blog is an efficient way to give related information to the users and set up a relationship with them. Nowadays organizations are willingly creating their blogs to cater to the information needs of their customers who then visit the official sites.
Videos – Adding videos to a site to promote and explain the products helps a lot as users find videos more appealing.
White Papers – As a piece of information that help readers to gain understanding about a company and its products, White Papers prove to be a productive marketing tool.
EBook – It is another effective way used in inbound marketing to create awareness among the target audience. By offering Free EBook a company can get traffic through links embedded in it.
Webinars – The interactive element of the webinars make them a highly profitable technique that can drive sales. With it a business can reach a large audience simultaneously and promote its products or services.
SEO – It involves optimizing a website to boost its ranking in search engines so that customers can find it easily on search results. A top ranked site attracts more traffic and therefore SEO is an important part of inbound marketing.
Social Networks – With users making extensive use of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. marketers have realized that promotion over these platforms helps establishing mutually beneficial relationship with the customers.
Benefits of Inbound Marketing
Is Cost Effective
In comparison to Outbound Marketing which involves huge investment, inbound marketing is less expensive but offers high ROI.
Focused Targeting
Inbound Marketing targets interested customers and thus marketers create content to meet their specific needs. This makes it efficient as it saves time and effort.
Leads to Conversions
Inbound Marketing helps meet the sales targets as the various techniques used lead to an increase in conversions.
The efficiency of inbound marketing is higher because it keeps its focus entirely on the users interests and presents the content so which incites them to take action. Also it appeals more to the present day tech savvy customers by providing the information they are looking forward to. All these factors have contributed to its growing popularity and it is being regarded as an effective form to target customers and increase leads.
Let us know your thought on this post. Have you ever heard about inbound marketing strategy? Have you or your friend used inbound marketing for its business? Please take a moment and use the comment form below to tell us that.
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Hi Sneha,
It is a very nice and informative post.I prefer Inbound Marketing over out bound and one of the reason of prefering inbound marketing is because of low promotion budget.
Inbound marketing is a highly effective strategy if implemented correctly. Prospects have learned to just tune out any marketing that is being directed at them. It’s important to utilize inbound marketing strategies to join the conversation that the prospect is already having with themselves. You are helping to solve the problem that they already have.
Yes, I use inbound marketing and focus on the needs of the people visiting my website. My goal is to help creative people, entrepreneurs, etc., to make a living from what they love to do. So I post pertinent links, write blog posts, ebooks, etc. on my website and social media. It has worked great.
I didn’t heard about inbound marketing strategy but after reading your post I know something about it.
I prefer inbound marketing than outbound marketing. Customers finds more about the companies products.
Inbound marketing is starting to gain a lot of traction as opposed to outbound marketing, especially online. I think advertisement overload has a lot to do with this – people just want to know that they’re seen as a person instead of a number!
It seems to me that inbound marketing strategy, and outbound have alot in common. To an extent in my opinion you have to do the outbound marketing in order to get the inbound.
I was just doing social networking, blogs, ebook etc. for my Website now I think I should focus on videos and online free Webinars as well.
It was interesting to read about inbound marketing and how effectively it can help in promoting businesses. Outbound is also equally important but on a personal level I feel that it is important to first cater to the needs, queries and opinions of one’s visitors because customer satisfaction always comes first.
Apart from being cost-effective, I believe they make a durable source of traffic.