What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is a methodology that involves creating useful web content or copy for future customers to discover the right message, at the right time. The key objective is to be adaptive and useful to your prospective client’s needs. Invite, don’t intrude is the key principle. 

This helps your potential customers to find your offering such as online products and services through web content such as specific pages, blog posts, FAQ Sections, webinars, ebooks, research articles, images, videos, and social media posts. By writing content that answers their questions, search queries, or solves their problem, you engage and educate each customer, across multiple channels.

It is not only one technique, but a combination of many different techniques that work together: SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, and marketing automation as few examples. 

Who’s your ideal customer? 

Inbound marketing uses tailored messages to attract the right type of customer. Ultimately, inbound marketing targets the ideal customer – the kind that are actively looking for answers or solutions.

Each customer is at a different stage of the buyer’s journey. They may just be aware of your company. They might be comparing your services against a competitor’s. Or, they could be one email away from buying your services

How does inbound marketing work? 

Inbound marketing works in phases, with content that’s tailored to the stage of the buyer journey your lead is in. There are three stages of the conversion funnel: TOFU (top of the funnel), MOFU (middle of the funnel), and BOFU (bottom of the funnel). In simple terms, your inbound content focuses on the 3 or 4 stages of the buyer’s journey – Awareness, Consideration, Conversion or even Delightment. 

The content you create will range from general to in-depth and specific, depending on where your lead is in the funnel. 

How can inbound marketing help your business? 

For most B2B companies, the primary challenge is a small marketing team. So now, rather than relying on traditional marketing – like a large staff of marketers and sales department – inbound strategies only needs a small marketing and sales team to attract leads and increase sales and conversions. 

Inbound marketing features 

Here are 4 major features that must be included in all inbound marketing campaigns.

• CTAs: calls-to-action attract attention and lead people to perform an action.
• Landing Pages: a landing page is a major factor when it comes to whether or not a lead decides to download your content. It is also a good place to include lead generation forms to gather information about your users. 
• Forms: typically, leads must fill out a form before they receive any long-form content.
• Automation: by using automation, you can set up workflows that ensure you are properly nurturing all of your leads. 

How does inbound marketing fit into your sales funnel? 

By writing great pieces of content – the kind that answers questions and solves challenges – for each stage of the buyer’s journey, you can move customers from being a stranger to a repeat customer.

You can also segment potential customers into buyer personas. This allows you group types of customers, like “compression engineers”, “sourcing’ or “leadership teams”.

Why would you segment them into buyer personas? Because now, you can see which audience group is most interested in content marketing. Now, you can see which buyer persona most-often coverts, becoming a customer. Now, you have a better idea of where to direct your content marketing.argets the ideal customer – the kind that are actively looking for answers or solutions.

Why inbound marketing has a better ROI

Today, companies are abandoning traditional marketing for inbound strategies. Because inbound solves the biggest challenge for B2B companies – small marketing teams and lack of internal resources. Beyond this, the inbound methodology is proven to boost lead generation and increase sales.

Rather than using outbound to talk to the masses of people who are trying to block you out, inbound lets you be found by potential customers already searching for information about your industry, product or service.

In the past, advertising teams would blast out created messages. This could be an email, a billboard, or search engine marketing.

But here’s the problem. Not every person is ready for that message. It may be the wrong message. It might be the wrong time for them to read it. And so, potential customers miss out on valuable offers.

Unlike outbound marketing, an inbound strategy doesn’t compete for consumers’ attention. Rather, it answers the questions B2B companies always hear. Questions like, “what makes you different?” Why should I switch services? How can you help my own B2B business?” 

So if you’re interested in inbound marketing services in Kenya, reach out for a demo. We’ll show you the ins-and-outs of the program and how you can increase sales and lead generation.

Are you ready to create, transform and grow? Connect with us and let’s do this.