Inbound Marketing: What It Is And How To Do It For Your Company

How to apply an Inbound Marketing strategy in your company?

Inbound vs Outbound

It is very possible that when reading the term Inbound Marketing we quickly associate it with concepts such as attraction marketing, permission marketing, marketing strategy that respects the user, non-intrusive marketing. On the other side of the border we have traditional marketing, intrusive marketing that comes to be summed up with the antagonist Outbound Marketing.

Let’s take an example to clarify more: we are watching our favorite movie on a generalist channel; Suddenly, without prior notice, the advertising space enters or exceeds the time allowed by law; While it develops, we take the opportunity to go to the kitchen to prepare a soda or perhaps a bowl of popcorn and despite the distance, far from the television, the network forces us, at least, to listen to the commercial because, knowing that our psychology As a consumer tries to avoid advertising, the volume of advertising space always increases.

In this everyday situation, the invasiveness of this type of advertising is evident.

Let’s go to another example, this time in the digital field: we have been interested in a product in our Internet search engine and we have looked at the options offered by digital advertising to our consultation. From there, the review of headlines in the digital newspaper, a visit to our favorite YouTube channel or the reading of a blog to which we are subscribed will be seasoned with offers related to the one we made at the time, through banners, page stealer, skyscraper, interstitial, layer for a certain time.

Although it is invasive, unlike traditional advertising, digital advertising offers us the possibility of closing the banners, signaling that we are not interested and pointing out the reason. On the other hand, the most interesting thing is that advertising in search engines, video and display offers us products in which we have already shown some interest, very contrary to what traditional advertising does, through television, radio, dam or exterior signage, which puts us on a platter with very expensive product campaigns that interest us little or nothing, thanks to its obvious lack of algorithm.

How is the development of the Inbound Marketing strategy in a business?

Faced with that cold call to the door of Outbound advertising, the Inbound strategy is based on the union of different tools that build a very clear and guided process:

• Let’s attract attention
• We offer valuable content
• We gain the trust of the user to provide us with their data
• Let’s start a communication relationship with him / her that opens the doors for us to offer him / her reliable services and / or products
• Let’s take it towards conversion
• Let’s maintain a communication and loyalty relationship
• Let’s make it a prospector for our services and / or products

Attraction

We are in a world where the currency of exchange is the user’s attention. The time that the potential client allows us to convince him has been reduced from 12 seconds in the year 2000, life is urgent and attention is fleeting.

Today we have no more than 8 seconds to convince you that our message is worth it.

A potential customer is expensive, as much as the investment we make to attract them. Search engine advertising comes into play here, on social networks where creativity, aesthetic spark, innovation, sometimes retro, come together on the one hand, where it is always necessary to do something different from the rest, because only the black sheep stands out over the white flock. On the other hand, the experience of the manager who establishes the perfect strategy in SEM or Social Media Ads campaigns acquires great importance.

Content

Here SEO and content dumped in blog, copys, web content, in short, keywords that attract the attention of the algorithm come together so that it includes that article as relevant and shows it when a user does a specific search. The wake-up call is made, now it is necessary that the content be interesting enough for those users to decide that it was worth those minutes that they have granted.

Lead

Converting an Internet user into a lead consists of providing us with their data: an email, a name by which to call them. It is the essential step to send, through a good email marketing, newsletter, infographics, offers, descriptions of services and products on a very clear script, a well-designed storytelling (development of a story strategy) in which the user / a is the hero of the story where he has a need. We, as wise men, can cover it with our solutions. Of course, our heroes must be very clear about what they gain with our product and what they stop gaining if they do not acquire it. Clarity above all.

Conversion

It is clear that the purpose is to convert. In this process we must “educate” the client to acquire the product that best suits their needs: infographics with comparisons that develop in an affordable way the characteristics of what is offered, the options that are available… all through that email marketing that leads us by the hand towards a direct and effective communication that is respectful at the same time.

Loyalty

On one occasion, a commercial for a car dealership pointed out “I don’t sell cars, I sell after-sales service.” He was clear that the important thing in his entire conversion process was the loyalty of the customer who would return year after year for revisions, breakdowns, tuning and… of course, for the change of car over time.

Why invest so much in attracting a customer and, once achieved, not in their loyalty? A satisfied customer will be a prospector for our brand and, although this is not the cheapest advertising due to all the development of the Inbound strategy, we can consider it the most profitable in the medium-long term, because it reinforces the possibility of future conversions. .

At this point, in that of loyalty, not only does the marketing team come into play with its attraction, content and offers campaigns, but the entire human team of the company also participates through well-designed protocols of face to the public, the image offered, the treatment with the client, care and agreement, all of them, with the Inbound Marketing strategy that pursues a relationship of “friendship and trust” with the client. Quid pro quo, or as we like to say today: win / win.

Do you already know how to make an Inbound Marketing strategy?

Unlike other strategies, Inbound is slow, patient, macerates little by little. It should be based on well-designed attraction campaigns, content that is correctly written and that adds value, and very thoughtful action / reaction protocols: in the face of such a question, this answer. At no time should there be improvisation.

A company that has urgency should opt for advertising in search engines and social networks, a company that looks to the medium-long term can consider an Inbound Marketing strategy with its content-based developments, on the interaction analysis reflected in the Lead quadrants Scoring (user rating system based on their interaction with the company) and a communication design with the user / customer reflected in the Lead Nurturing dashboard (automated communication protocol associated with the point where the customer is within sale tunnel), but this is material for another article.