What is Inbound Marketing? Do you know what is the ideal type of Inbound Marketing for your business? The Digital Marketing is booming full, it is the great ally of all brands in highlighting and have more visibility online. For this, one of the most used strategies is Inbound Marketing, which consists of attracting customers in a non-intrusive way. In this post, we are going to talk about the most successful Inbound Marketing techniques and when they should be used.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound Marketing is a set of advertising techniques and digital Marketing whose main purpose is to make the user feel attracted to the brand. Its purpose is that the client finds the brand and not vice versa.
It consists, above all, in what is known as Content Marketing. In other words, brands create valuable and relevant content, which are then published on the different channels they use to interact with their customers (social networks, blog, YouTube, etc.).
The purpose of this is for the user to find that company when they are looking for content like the ones they have published. If you enter the channel of the brand, you will find more content related to this theme that aims to attract you.
From there, a relationship begins between the brand (which offers content) and the user (who consumes that content). All this process guides the user towards an end, which is to buy a product without being pressured.
Inbound Marketing Phases
Before talking about the types of Inbound Marketing, we will review the phases of Inbound Marketing , which will be essential to fully understand the types that exist.
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Attract
The first step in this strategy is to generate quality traffic , that is, from users interested in your content. This can be accomplished in a number of ways, for example through SEO techniques. It basically consists of a good positioning in the search engines organically.
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To interact
In this phase what is sought is to capture and generate leads ; that is, that the visits to your website generated in the first phase end up registering and providing their data; especially e-mail. This can be achieved through forms or by creating downloadable content that arouses the visitor’s interest. The conversion phase therefore seeks to capture and generate leads so that visits begin to form part of records in our database.
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Automate
For this phase, it is ideal that you have up-to-date the database with the emails of users who visited your website and ended up registering and providing their data. It is very important that you have the permission of these people to send them emails.
When you have a database ready, you will begin to automate and distribute the contents based on the interest of the users. This process is known as email Marketing and is widely used today. You can automate it using tools like Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign.
In relation to posts on social networks, blog and other platforms, they can also be automated. You can leave them ready and indicate what day and what time you want to publish. One of the objectives of all these publications must be user interaction, managing to generate user content .
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To sell
This phase is where we finally convert those leads from phase two into sales of our products or services . As in the rest of the processes, we must avoid being aggressive and continue to use the content in our favor; providing all the information the customer needs to close the sale.
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Loyalty in Inbound Marketing
The different types of Inbound Marketing are not only focused on selling, but also on customer loyalty. It is in this phase when we must put all our efforts to preserve the client and make them buy our products and services again.
We can send you offers and personalized information to keep your attention on our brand. In this way, we will take care of the relationship with customers who are already loyal.
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Analyze
It is the last step of our Inbound Marketing strategy. It is a fundamental step, it is about analyzing all the progress we have made with the strategy we apply.
If we have good results, we must think about how to increase the scope of our efforts. On the contrary, if the results we have achieved are not what we expected, we will have to rethink our efforts, modify some parts or even change our strategy.
Inbound Marketing Types
Now that we understand what the phases are, let’s talk about the four main types of Inbound Marketing.
Attraction Inbound Marketing
It refers to the first phase, “attract”. It is an ideal type of Inbound Marketing for your business if your goal is to increase the visibility of your blog or website.
This type of inbound marketing makes the difference between those who excel in digital media and those who don’t. It basically consists of a good content strategy. These contents must be relevant and focused on the buyer persona of the brand.
Inbound Marketing has already shown that it is very effective in gaining visibility in digital media , but if we do not know where we want to go and how to do it, we will never achieve good results. Therefore, it is necessary to follow a content strategy to generate quality organic traffic. One way to create a good strategy is as follows:
Define the dissemination channel
The first step in our strategy will be the creation of the channel through which we will disseminate the content . The most common is your own business website or blog; Although currently social networks greatly facilitate the dissemination of brands.
Define our buyer persona
We must know the user well to be able to reach him. This is achieved by creating a detailed profile of the ideal client, which must include personal, professional, sociodemographic data, as well as that person’s behavior and habits. Through this profile, we get a real image of our buyers.
Search keywords
The keywords or keywords used to position the content on search engines . Applying the keywords most used in your niche will help you get the right users to visit your post. The way to choose keywords correctly is to study which are the strongest in our niche and how to position them well on the web so that Google and the rest of search engines detect them.
Define a content Marketing strategy
The quintessential phrase in Inbound Marketing is “Content is king.” This phrase is used to say that users are looking for relevant and valuable information , therefore it will leave if it is not found.
Since Inbound Marketing is totally focused on the user, it is necessary to implement the best possible content strategy. Only in this way can we satisfy the customer’s information needs.
The most widely used channels to spread content are blogs, social networks, YouTube and, more recently, podcasts.
Content Marketing, in addition to attracting quality traffic, will help you position yourself as an authority in your sector.
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Optimize content for SEO
It comes from the English Search Engine Optimization and it is a technique to achieve visibility in the search engines organically. By “organic,” what we mean is that there is no need to pay. For example, when you go to Google, some of the first results are usually ads.
This positioning is not achieved through SEO, but through SEM ( Search Engine Marketing ), which consists of payment campaigns, also called Pay Per Click (PPC).
Any of the types of Inbound Marketing has to go hand in hand with a good SEO positioning strategy . SEO strategy includes good keyword selection and website optimization.
The way to choose keywords well is to study which are the strongest in our niche and how to position them well on the web so that Google detects it. SEO also includes friendly URLs, that is, a link building strategy. The links must be simple and contain the keywords by which we want to position.
Finally, the content we publish has to be well organized and optimized. The title must be attractive and contain our keywords. The structure of the text must be divided into headings and bullets, duly highlighted.
If this type of Inbound Marketing is carried out effectively, the results will be reflected in the visits that your blog or website will receive.
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Automation Inbound Marketing
Automation is one of the most beneficial types of Inbound Marketing. Imagine for a second putting all those repetitive tasks into automatic mode, which make you waste a lot of time. Well, in your content strategy this is possible thanks to automation.
There are digital tools that allow you to program when you want to publish and they do it for you. The time you will save, you can dedicate to more productive tasks. It is very common to use automation strategies for data capture, to increase the company database.
One of the automation techniques for data capture that continues to be more successful today is email Marketing. It consists of sending mass emails to registered users in a database. It is very important to emphasize that you should not send emails to anyone without their prior approval . To get that approval, what we do is combine email Marketing with a good content strategy.
First, we create free value content, which can be an ebook or newsletter, a video, a course, or a guide. We disclose this content and, in order for interested users to have access, they must subscribe to our Marketing email list. Thus, they give their approval for us to contact them by email.
Other forms of data collection are forms . They are used for the user to register on the web and receive notifications every time new content is published.
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Inbound Loyalty Marketing
It corresponds to the loyalty phase of Inbound Marketing. It is very important to maintain the relationship with the customer after the purchase has been made. This is where this type of Inbound comes in.
The objective of loyalty is to avoid customer flight. Think about it, it is not very profitable to make a great effort (attraction, conversion and automation) for the user to buy a product of yours and then lose it as a customer. What all brands are looking for is that users remember them and buy again more times. For this, it is necessary to keep the consumer satisfied through good customer service.
Here we must also take special care with those users who registered on our website, have not made any purchases yet, but follow all the content we publish. At any time, they can become customers. Through loyalty, contact is maintained with these users so that, when they need your services, they turn to you.
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Complete Inbound Marketing
In some cases, brands want to carry out a complete strategy that combines all the phases of Inbound Marketing (attract, convert, sell, automate, retain and analyze).
Here is very useful the strategy of the funnel of conversion ( funnel), which accompanies the user throughout the purchase cycle. Before becoming a customer, the user goes through different stages from the moment they enter your website for the first time until they make the first purchase.
It is called a funnel because at the beginning of the cycle the number of users is greater than at the end. That is, of all the people who enter a brand’s website, only a small part will go all the way and make the purchase.
Some will leave without even having seen the products, others will not add anything to the cart and some will not leave after choosing products, but without making the purchase.
The purpose of the conversion funnel is to make as many users as possible become customers. Therefore, they guide web visitors during all phases of Inbound Marketing.
The funnel also serves for the company to analyze the strategy it is carrying out and see in which phases more customers are lost. In this way, it is possible to detect the weak points of our strategy and improve the techniques we use.
This analysis stage can be carried out with the help of tools such as Google Analytics, which allows detailed evaluation of the results of the conversion funnel.
Calls to action, or “call to action”, are also very powerful. They are used to make the reader perform a certain action. For example, “subscribe to our newsletter”. If they are used well in the Inbound Marketing phases, the user gets to the end of the funnel.
Finally, it is also recommended to include a frequently asked questions page. The reader may have doubts and leave if they cannot find an answer to their questions.
Inbound Marketing Conclusion
We have come to the end of our little guide. We hope this information has been useful to delve into the world of Inbound Marketing. We have seen which are the most successful types of Inbound and when they should be used. We hope you liked it. Leave us a comment with your opinion, we want to read you!