An Inbound marketing strategy is a consumer-centric solution that focuses on your customer’s needs and desires throughout their decision-making journey.
The approach is based on attracting your target market and accompanying them along the process from the moment they come into contact with your brand, to becoming a valued customer.
While traditional outbound marketing interrupts your audience with content they don't always want, (like when you're watching TV and are forced to watch an advert for a product you’re not interested in), inbound marketing forms connections for what they are looking for, and aims to solve a problem they already have.
Your audience will be at different stages of their buying journey, so it is crucial that you are tailoring your content to where they are in the decision-making process. Your content should attract, engage and nurture them through the buying cycle and decision-making process.
Identifying your target audience:
The first step with an inbound marketing strategy is to identify your target audience and create customer personas. Inbound marketers define their target market by looking at things such as age, gender, geographic location, and behavioural characteristics.
Asking yourself questions such as. ‘what are their top questions or concerns? ‘How can we make their life easier with our service or product offering? What type of content do they want to consume? Where do they consume their content?
From here you can develop personas that allow you to streamline your approach of how to market and connect with them.
Create relevant content:
Now you have identified and created your customer personas, you need to create content that will attract and engage them. You want to become a resource and genuinely help them overcome the challenges you outlined in your target market research. By consistently publishing valuable content, your customers and the search engines will see you as a trusted authority in your market and will bring your brand name to the forefront of your customers' minds when they are at the right stage of the buying journey.
Examples of Inbound marketing tactics you can use:
Video Content
Using different video formats to attract your audience to your website with clear calls to action (CTA). These can be showreel videos, explainer videos or thought leader videos where you provide solutions to their challenges
Ads
Use pay per click advertising (PPC) on search engines and social media platforms to attract your audience with highly targeted content answering their needs. Check out our previous blog on 9 reasons you should advertise online
Blogging
Create blogs that answer the challenges or concerns you identified that your market experience, as this is an effective way to attract customers to your website and allow you engage with them.
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is vital in order to get your content found online. Conducting keyword research and optimising your web pages accordingly will help you be found when your audience is searching for your services.
Email Marketing
There are a number of email marketing platforms that can be used to create branded email campaigns that communicate with your audience in a highly personal and highly relevant way.
Conversational marketing
Using chatbots or live chats on your website can spark up a conversation with your prospective customers and answer their questions while they are on their buyer journey.
Analyse:
With all marketing activity, measurement is vital. It is key to analyse your success and failures so you can learn and adapt, it’s a test & learns the process. Inbound marketing is no different. Analytics can help you identify the areas where you are losing interest from your target audience, identify the platforms or content formats your customer personas are most engaged with. Also, learn which messaging is resonating with them. All of this allows you to optimise and improve your inbound strategy. Google Analytics is probably the most popular tool used for accurate reporting, it offers a clear and user-friendly dashboard, and is easy for your web developer to implement on your website.
While many of the tools outlined above may come at a cost, the investment will be a fraction of what you would spend using traditional marketing formats and will be far more targeted and measurable.
If you would like to find out more and chat through an Inbound marketing campaign or have a free 15 min marketing consultancy chat, feel free to email me at fiona@vmditigal.ie and we can arrange a quick call.
