Take your marketing to the next level with this Inbound Marketing 101

Inbound marketing is a marketing method where you attract potential customers by actively helping them along the buying process. By helping them as early as possible in this process, you will build a valuable relationship with your leads. With inbound marketing, the goal is to put your ideal audience and website at the center. By feeding your ideal audience with strong, relevant and authentic content that they enjoy viewing and sharing, you will ensure a large influx of right visitors that you can further convert to leads and to customers.

De 4 fases van inbound marketing

1. Attract

Before potential customers come to you, they will often first search for a product or service they need. This is usually done through a Google search. Visitors who find your products or services will first learn more about what you offer and check out your competitors. They take advice from other buyers through reviews and will decide on their own initiative whether to buy your product or service. By offering good and relevant content, you will be found faster in Google and, as a result, potential customers will choose you rather than your competitors.

By offering relevant content to your ideal audience, you’re going to be found more easily and also attract the right traffic to your website. At this stage, it is important to focus on visitors who are most likely to become leads. Providing the right and relevant content is done by determining relevant topics. You do this through keyword research, i.e. finding out what your ideal target audience is searching for, but also what you want to be found on.

2. Convert

After you attract the right traffic to your Web site, you want to turn these visitors into leads. It is also important to categorize these visitors/leads according to your own goals on the one hand and the likelihood of conversion on the other. You are going to activate these prospects with offers. Thanks to attracting the right people to your website, they are also interested in your products or services. This also makes them more likely to leave their details to get more relevant content.

3. Closing

In this phase, you are going to get customers from your leads. Not all leads are ready to make a purchase decision. You help your leads through the buying process by sending personalized nurturing emails in which they learn more and more about the topic (product or service) they are interested in. This will create more trust and also gives the opportunity to qualify leads.

4. Continue to invest (Delight)

After getting leads and converting them into customers, it is also very important to continue to invest in your relationship with this new customer. So keep offering relevant content that makes them purchase additional products or services (recurring business) and maybe even recommend your company to others (ambassadors). The latter ensures that you get new visitors and the inbound marketing process starts all over again with new leads/customers.

 

Why choose inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing takes care of generating quality leads and converting them into customers. These leads will be interested in your products or services because we provide relevant information on which you are also well found on search engines. So it’s about qualitative leads receiving the right information that they have expressed interest in. Therefore, converting from lead to customer will be easier because they were already looking for your products or services. It is also important to build a relationship with your potential customers by providing them with attractive (visually and textually) and relevant information that helps them through the buying process and also helps them make a good buying decision.

So with inbound marketing, you make sure the potential customers come to you because they find you easily. By attracting potential customers with your online content, you are going to help these potential customers, who are already actively looking for goods and services at that time, find what they are looking for.

 

 

How do you do inbound marketing?

There are several resources (tools) you can use to do inbound marketing. The first and then the most important is content marketing. By creating relevant and authentic content – tailored to your ideal target audience and stages of the buying process – you’re going to attract the right visitors to your website.

De tweede manier is via SEO (Search Engine Optimization). You want to be found more easily and quickly by your target audience. With SEO, you are going to tailor your content to what your target audience is effectively searching for so that your information gets shown in Google. This is a longer-term strategy as well: you want to be and stay findable so that the right traffic is directed to your website. Not quantity alone, but for especially qualitative leads are important for your business.

A third means is through social media. The various social media platforms allow you to engage with your potential customers, building and maintaining a relationship. It is also important that you share your own content here so that you can be found even more easily.

A final tool is marketing automation. This is where you will build meaningful relationships with your leads and customers through emailing. You do this by sending personalized emails based on their interests. Through these emails, you are also going to move them forward in the buying process.

 

The benefits of inbound marketing

• It is customer-oriented

The focus and starting point is your ideal client and his challenges and problems. You want the content you offer to answer their questions.

• It works for all sectors

Inbound marketing works across all industries: B2C, B2B to nonprofit.

• The customers come to you

You attract people who are (already) looking for a particular product or service. So you make sure they come to you the moment they are looking for something you can provide a solution for. That way, you also don’t have to set up expensive marketing campaigns to attract attention or create a need, competing with many other marketers.

• It is durable

You want to reach your target audience organically. This is a long-term strategy, but once you are found in Google’s search results, you can stay there for a long time and traffic to your website will keep coming in.

• It is efficient

The potential customer decides when to look for information and what information he or she needs. As a result, it is important to create content that remains relevant for a long time so that you continue to be found.

The bottom line of inbound marketing is that you want to drive the right traffic to your website by sharing relevant content in order to work only with quality leads that you then help through the buying process and then eventually convert them into lasting customers.