People are constantly scouring the internet, searching for information about anything and everything, including businesses and the products or services that they sell.

Have you ever wondered what exactly inbound marketing is and how you can leverage it in order to create a thriving business? Then, continue reading this guide to learn all of the essential information and get the answer to this question: what is inbound marketing?

Why Marketing Is So Important

Marketing is one of the most effective ways to connect and impact customers in order to convince them to align with your brand in one way or another. Without marketing, gaining new customers is left entirely to chance.

Effective marketing tactics will lead to a boost in sales, and responses to marketing campaigns will help you to learn more about your customers.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

Many marketing tactics rely on reaching out to people and convincing them to come to you.

For example, if you place an ad on social media, your goal is to get people to click on it right away and visit wherever you’re leading them to. They weren’t necessarily looking for your business or its products or services initially, but you drew them to you.

Inbound marketing engages with people by connecting with them organically instead. Here are a few examples of inbound marketing that we’ll explore in more detail:

All of these tactics rely on potential customers finding your business on their own, whether through a friend, an online search, or something else.

Because people are choosing to engage with your content in these situations, this type of marketing is more effective than simply placing information in front of someone through ads and hoping that they bite.

Social Media Campaigns

When it comes to inbound marketing tips, making use of social media had to make the list.

People spend an average of 2.5 hours on social media each day. So this is a massive window of opportunity for you to capture their time and attention!

Many of the biggest and most successful companies in the world use social media to draw new customers in and keep in touch with current customers.

The most effective way to use social media is to focus on telling a story with your content. From here, consider leveraging your content by hosting giveaways and interacting with people that comment or send direct messages to you.

These actions might seem small, but they’re considered important aspects of inbound marketing. For example, hosting a giveaway can help introduce new people to your page through their trusted friends, and responding to people that interact with your content can draw them in and convince them to finally make a purchase!

Videos

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth at least a million.

Videos can have an enormous impact on the people that watch them. This makes people more likely to share this type of content. And, the more people that share your content, the more people that will end up viewing it without you doing any additional work.

If a friend shares a video with someone, they’re much more likely to watch it and view it in a positive light than if that same video came up on their feed through ad placement.

This is why incorporating videos into your marketing strategy had to be included in this inbound marketing guide.

If creating videos isn’t in your wheelhouse, consider hiring a marketing agency to develop and create videos for you.

Webinars

A webinar is a type of online conference that allows a company to share information with people that attend in either a live or pre-recorded format.

Webinars usually include some type of slide presentation, feature a prominent speaker, and focus on teaching people about one specific subject.

For example, if your company sells courses that teach people how to start their own accounting business, a webinar might provide a deep dive into what your products will help them to accomplish.

The purpose of a webinar is always to inform and sell. They’re widely used and considered a viable inbound marketing tactic because people are voluntarily choosing to participate in the presentation to learn more.

Blogs

Having a blog might seem like a lot of work, but the payoff can be great, and it’s always possible to hire someone to write blog posts for you.

These figures clearly portray how much people love reading blogs, which highlights why they’re a wonderful opportunity to take advantage of.

Blog posts can be found through organic web searches, shared on social media, or sent out to email subscribers. Popular blog posts that get shared often have the potential to bring many new faces to your site without spending any money if you don’t want to.

Whether you choose to create blog posts on your own or have someone craft them for you, they’re an inbound marketing tool you should make use of.

Search Engine Optimized (SEO) Content

It takes careful research of the right keywords and format to use along with optimizing the page itself to be search engine friendly.

While it’s easiest to implement SEO strategies with an expert, it’s also something you can work on on your own over time.

Either way, focusing on SEO when it comes to anything you post online, including each page on your website, your blog, and your social media channels, you’re more likely to come up in relevant searches.

This means that instead of paying to show up in the first few results on Google when people search relevant terms, you might show up naturally.

Email Campaigns

In order for email campaigns to be considered inbound marketing, people have to come to you and voluntarily give you their email before receiving any information.

If you pay for a list of emails or cold email people, this is not considered inbound marketing and will be much less effective.

Sending out emails to an organically built list will remind them that you exist and keep them up to date on what’s happening with your company.

All of these emails will be well received when they show up in people’s inboxes, and many of them encourage people to take action, which can lead to sales with minimal effort.

How to Develop a Strategy

After reviewing the different methods of inbound marketing, you might be wondering how you can strategize and come up with a plan that will help you to keep organized.

Every marketing campaign essentially has three main components: making a plan, analyzing the results, and making changes based on the results.

Making a Plan

Are you looking to drive traffic to your website? Do you want to increase sales? Would it be helpful to grow your social media following? Do you want to focus on getting customers that have bought in the past to make another purchase?

Depending on your primary goal, the method that you choose to employ might vary. For example, if you’re trying to grow your social media following, sending out an email probably isn’t the best way to do that.

Once you’ve determined your ultimate goal, consider which method makes the most sense to use. From here, come up with a specific plan and begin creating content that matches.

There are many different tools that you can use to make inbound marketing simple, including the initial planning process.

Analyzing the Results

Keeping track of key metrics is an important part of running marketing campaigns.

Metrics help you to understand if your campaign was successful or not. If it was, you know that this method works well. If it wasn’t, it’s good to have this information so that you can adjust and try something else in the future.

Inbound marketing is more challenging to track than other forms of marketing, but here are some things to consider:

Make Changes When Necessary

If the metrics that you’re seeing aren’t showing favorable results, it’s important to make a note of this and adjust things as quickly as possible.

The benefit of inbound marketing in comparison to other forms is that changing directions is easy, especially considering most of the methods mentioned here are well within your control, unlike running ads or making use of other marketing avenues.

Pick how often you want to review the results (weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) and stick to this timeline.

Benefits of Inbound Marketing

As mentioned earlier, there are many different ways to market your business. So, what are the specific benefits of choosing inbound marketing over another option?

Fewer Expenses

Mass marketing can be risky, and it’s often extremely costly. However, inbound marketing doesn’t have to be!

You’re in total control of how much you spend, and if you don’t want to spend any money at all, that’s also a possibility.

Better Credibility

Is it possible to pay to have your business plastered everywhere, whether it’s online or in-person? Yes. Does doing this truly provide you with any credibility? No.

If people find you through a friend, through an online search, or some other natural way, you will appear much more credible from the get-go.

Better Quality Leads

Inbound marketing makes it so that any leads that you might get are high quality. How? The people that find you are connected to or interested in what you have to offer in some way.

They won’t come across you otherwise. This form of marketing makes it much easier to target your ideal customer.

Easier to Make Changes

Not only that, but the nature of inbound marketing makes it easier for you to connect with your customer base and understand any issues that they have. Being able to see social media comments and messages will help you to understand what changes you can make to better your business.

What Is Inbound Marketing? The Best Kind of Marketing

This article walked you through the answer to the question: what is inbound marketing?

It also highlighted some of the different forms of inbound marketing to take advantage of and explained why this method is much more effective and impactful than other options.

Whether your business is just getting off the ground or your company has been thriving for years, inbound marketing can help you to grow and thrive like never before.

If you want to take advantage of some of the inbound marketing methods found here but would like some guidance or to have someone run campaigns for you, please don’t hesitate to contact us today for more information!

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What Is Inbound Marketing? A Complete Guide