Inbound and Content Marketing
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that is designed to draw visitors and keep that by engaging and delighting the customer rather than the traditional marketing method of just pushing a brand, brand, or product. This method is usually used on social media platforms to show an advertisement that is engaging to the customer. Once you have the customer engaged in your content you engage with the customer which often generates leads to other posts on your website. On the other hand, outbound marketing is the more traditional type of marketing by trying to reach the consumer with general media advertising platforms like TV advertisements or print.
The whole idea of inbound marketing is to focus and spend your money on target customers that are likely to convert. You should focus on reaching the correct set of customers instead of wasting money on those who aren’t interested in what you are promoting. If you aren’t sure where to start, you can look at the website Hubspot. Hubspot is an online inbound and content marketing software that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers.
The Inbound Marketing Process
Attract: The first step is the most important since you want to attract the right customer to your site. You don’t want to just attract any customer, you want to find out who your target market is. You then are able to create the right content to show to your target market to attract them to your website, blog, YouTube, etc. There are creative ways to attractive your potential customer from tutorial videos or eBooks to playlists. Starbucks lets their customers follow their music that they play in their stores on Spotify.
Convert: After the visitor has visited the website they will be ready to convert the customer by gathering their contact information like an email address. Being sure to attract the correct customer is crucial since it will be easier to gather that contact information. You want to exchange your tutorial video, eBook, or whatever you have chosen for the customers email.
Close: The next step in inbound marketing is to turn your leads into customers. There are many techniques to help you do this. Knowing what our customers like can help us use email integration with a call-to-action. Sending useful content to your potential customer that they enjoy can create awareness of your product and puts your customer one step closer to buy something.
Delight: After your customer has made a purchase, you don’t just leave them. You want to establish brand loyalty with them and to help do that, you want to show your customers that you still value them. You want to continuously engage with your customers online to show that you care about them. Delighting your customers will create more sales opportunities with them.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is very similar to inbound marketing. It is centered around creating, publishing, and distributing content for your target audience, usually online, the goal of which is to attract new customers. Most companies with an e-commerce website do content marketing through online social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube.
Starbucks has one of the best brand recognitions in the world. This is mostly due to their content marketing strategy. Starbucks has always improved their brand reputation which has helped turn it into what it is today. They are all about connecting to their target audience, which is men and women in middle to upper classes. Starbucks stores are all about an experience from their rewards program with mobile ordering to their playlists that are able to be found on Spotify. It is also known as a place to sit down and relax or even study. As you can see below, Starbucks posts pictures on Instagram that reflect their brand.
Most posts are bright, clean, and modern which reflects what Starbucks is. They like to keep their posts short and to the point. Let’s say the Instagram post caught your attention and you land on the Starbucks webpage, you will see the same clean and modern look as their Instagram but in more detail. You might stumble across a video on the website which shows a short modern clip of their drink options, but still emphasizes the Starbucks brand to the customer.
Consumers see hundreds of advertisements per day and you want to make sure what you are showing potential customers are actually relevant to them. Inbound marketing is a great way to do this and it will help you saving money by targeting customers that are actually interested in your product.