What is Inbound Marketing?

Back in the day, brands had to spend millions of rands on billboards, newspaper and radio ads to tell people about their product or service. This method of marketing is called the “Push Method”. This is because brands are technically pushing themselves onto the public. Over time the Internet has changed the landscape for all businesses and has allowed for a specific movement to take place. That movement is called the inbound marketing movement.

Today, pushing your product or service is not the only way to get people to notice you. In fact, you can draw customers into your business while delighting them in such a way that they decide to engage or take action on their own. This  type of marketing is called Inbound Marketing.

Why is Inbound Marketing Important?

If a business wants to flourish (and not just survive) in today’s ever-changing digital environment, it’s essential to have both a solid inbound marketing strategy as well as a push strategy. If an inbound strategy is done correctly it can help increase customer acquisition rates over time as well as improving conversion rates.

What Does an Inbound Marketing Strategy Consist Of?

An inbound marketing strategy needs three things so that it can work effectively: attraction, engagement and delight.

1. Attraction

An inbound marketing strategy needs to be able to attract customers to a specific business, service or product. This is a fundamental of any digital strategy course.

Different ways to do this would be to:

• Run attractive and compelling ads

An ad doesn’t always translate into sales that is why it’s so important to ensure you’re running attractive as well as compelling ads that people wouldn’t mind seeing.

• Run ads that resonate with the customer and triggers a positive emotion

The most powerful ads today hits home with a user. Consider creating an ad that maybe asks a specific question or triggers a specific emotional response. In fact, the emotional nostalgia is highly effective in getting people to remember and engage with a specific ad.

• Producing videos that adds value to a potential customer

It is said that video will be responsible for the majority of web traffic in the coming years. With that in mind it’s important to create something that can potential entertain or add value to someone in the buying journey.

• Sharing relevant and high-quality content on social media

Just scheduling content on social media won’t cut it any more. With so much noise out there it’s essential to ensure you’re sharing content worth reading, watching or listening to.

• Writing articles that people find interesting and worth reading

As mentioned above, it all comes down to quality. Producing generic thin content won’t get you anywhere. Ensure you’re producing content that people will find interesting and most probably want to share with their friends who share the same interest.

• SEO – Search Engine Optimisation

This is most probably one of the most underrated inbound marketing strategies. Improving your search engine optimisation can help you rank higher within search engines over time. This can translate into more organic visits and leads. This means SEO can help lower your cost per acquisition over time.  Have a look at our Search Engine Optimisation and Web Analytics Course if you’re interested in learning more about SEO.

2. Engagement

Running or producing quality content is not where it stops. Ensure you get potential customers to engage with your content while keeping them engaged until they are 100% ready to become a customer.

Ways to go about this would be to:

• Produce high-quality lead magnets that adds value to a potential customer.

• Create compelling e-mail newsletters.

• Get people to reply, engage and interact with your brand on social media.

3. Delight

Lastly, you want to ensure that you’re delighting the customer after they have interacted with your brand.   This can be through the value you’ve added by utilising a lead magnet or a specific piece of content you’ve created for your website or social media channels. Once a potential customer has experienced these three elements, the chances of them becoming a customer is a lot higher. That’s what we all want at the end of the day.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

You’ll learn about inbound marketing, and so much more, with the Digital School of Marketing’s Digital Marketing Course. To find out how having this marketing course under your belt will  benefit your business, follow this link.