What is Inbound Marketing?
  (in a nutshell)
& the power it brings to your business online.
Posted on October 15, 2017
by: Ryan Nichols
Category: Online Marketing

Inbound marketing is an online strategy that uses carefully designed content for a wide variety of purposes. This marketing concept is often referred to as “content marketing”. Here the approach is more about earning the attention of customers while making it easier for your business to be found online.

The very best inbound marketing involves making content for online readers that is simply helpful and educational. Also, the content should be value added and/or relevant to what someone is searching for. Search engines today are all about content quality.

There is an array of content categories where the online reader expectations are fundamentally different. Examples include: Articles, Blogs, Videos, Social Media, eNewsletters, Whitepapers, & more. Commonly today, we see many online research articles, educational videos and blogs, which are all highly effective forms of content that are part of an inbound marketing strategy.

The most common reasons why a business will have an annual inbound marketing program is to accomplish the following:

• Draw in More Potential Customers.
• Increase Sales, Leads, and Prospects.
• Build Brand and Product Awareness.
• Reduce Advertising Costs over Time.
• Become More of a Trusted Authority.

There can be simple or complex forms of inbound marketing designed to target potential customers at various levels of product & brand awareness. The most scaled tactics funnel online readers from key word based related market segments, who have no product awareness or intention to purchase, toward becoming educated and even in the position to quickly become a new customer. This is usually achieved by taking the customer through a structured informational path that builds awareness, insight, and increases their interest over time to become a customer.

Here is a simple outline of an inbound marketing process:

1. Create and implement strategies for attracting new and repeat traffic.
2. Convert visitors to leads, and then leads to sales.
3. Channel customers into repeat and/or higher margin customers.
4. Analyze performance results on a continual basis for improvement.

The phrase “inbound marketing” is also synonymous with the concept of “permission marketing”, which is mainly due to the process it entails. Fundamentally, this strategic approach to creating and designing content humbly brings the customer to you by earning their trust. This type of marketing offers tremendous benefits to a wide variety of businesses across different industries.

The long-term benefits of having an inbound marketing program are priceless.

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