Advancements in Digital Marketing using Inbound and Content Marketing strategies

Did you know you have a good friend known as marketing on your side? There have been shifts in marketing strategies caused by advancements in technology. These advancements have brought along the rise of using inbound marketing, which is how companies can create a one-on-one relationship that can have a lasting impact on your experience with a brand. Inbound consists of both content and context. Having both context and content allows inbound marketing to happen. Context narrows in on whom you are creating it for, while content is the blogs, photos, and interactive elements on your site.

What is the difference between Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing?

The difference between inbound marketing and outbound is the push vs. the pull strategy. Inbound focuses on creating quality that pulls people in while outbound focuses on pushing a message out to a group of people hoping for a response.

Why use Inbound Marketing? 

It is a way companies can provide a constant guide and be able to answer questions your customers or visitors might have. Inbound marketing allows you to be able to adapt to reach the right group of individuals your targeting. 

The Five Key aspects of Inbound Marketing:

Contacts: These are the people your company is marketing to and sells to partners who create a relationship. Having your contacts allows you to segment that way you're sending them relevant information. 

 Buyer Personas: You need to know whom you're trying to reach as you don't want just any traffic. You should create a semi-fictional outline of your ideal customer based on real data and speculations on motivations, behaviors, and goals.

Buyers journey: This is the process someone goes through when researching process building up to the goal of purchasing. The buyer's journey has three stages: the awareness stage, consideration stage, and decision stage.

 Content: These are blogs, podcast, photos, and videos which brands use to market to the consumer. 

Goals: help you understand if you were successful in reaching the right group and reflecting on what you need to optimize in the future. These goals could be having more blog subscribers, signing up for a webinar, or more traffic to your website over a specific time.

What is Content Marketing?

When using inbound marketing, you need content marketing. Often inbound marketing and content marketing are used hand in hand. Content marketing is a section of inbound marketing as it focusses on particular methods on content creation and distribution.

Content marketing helps facilitate conversation between you and a user. Ways to content market are blogs, eBooks, podcasts, videos, anything that you can consume on a deeper level. What content marketing is doing is providing free or additional value to your target users. 

Using content marketing makes it easier than ever to engage with your visitor, almost as if you are by the consumer's side. It acts as your voice and enables you to speak one to one with tens, hundreds, and potentially thousands who are looking for answers and insights regularly.

What makes Content Marketing Successful?

Content marketing helps create a one to one relationship and at scale! It also allows you to have insight into individuals' motivations goals roadblocks and behavior. What makes content making very successful is that you can create content that's timely, personalized, aligned ability to target information that is for the right person via the right time and right channel every single time.

  What are the Similarities between Hubspot Academy and B2C?

HubSpot Academy is a free online resource that provides a service to a business to help marketers develop skills within areas like sales, customer service. HubSpot is an excellent example of inbound marketing. You go to the site and get a lesson with an instructor giving a one on one relationship between the visitor and website. 

B2C means business to consumers meaning companies sell directly to the consumer. It focuses on the individual and markets their products for personal use. It primarily streamlines the process for the buyer. Examples of B2C companies are Starbucks, Spotify, and REI.

Looking at both HubSpot and B2C, both marketing strategies reference a smooth buyer's journey as they are both trying to create relationships or personalized experiences to delight users. Both focus on letting the customer have a voice and being there for their customer needs. Overall, describes business whose customer are individuals rather than a professional buyer. Therefore they are dedicated to the needs interest and challenges of people in their everyday lives. 

Moving Forward with Inbound Marketing 

Rather than forcing people to engage with you, inbound marketing allows you to instead focus on time and effort attracting the right customers at the right time. Inbound marketing could lead to higher engagement with the bigger pool of potential people who would like your product, making a more significant impact.