Inbound and Content Marketing: How To Attract Your Ideal Customer

An Introduction to Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing refers to the strategy of generating leads through the use of content and meaningful relationships. For a better understanding, this article by HubSpot provides three ways the inbound methodology can be applied.

?? Attract

By providing worthwhile content, you will enable the trust needed for prospective customers to further engage with your business. Creating buyer personas will formulate creation that speaks to customers (continue reading for why this is crucial!).

Strategies: social media, blog articles, ads, and content.

?? Engage

Align people's goals by providing solutions and insights to their problems. By presenting these during their buyer journey, you have the ability to convert a potential customer to consider your brand.

Strategies: search, blog articles, review sites, email marketing, and lead flows.

?? Delight

Empower your customers by aiding them towards success with their purchase. By administering an excellent service and support, customers can feel valued and feel confident in returning to your brand.

Strategies: email marketing, smart content, social media, and discount offers

How Inbound Marketing Actually Works

While it is less obvious to the common eye, inbound marketing is highly effective in numerous of ways.

1. Builds trust and credibility. Organic discovery is far more trustworthy than paid media. Inbound marketing is worthwhile if your brand seeks to build that customer loyalty and retention.
2. Generates quality traffic. It's important to have a lot of traffic, but it's even more important when it's made up of people you want to attract. Inbound marketing creates a more targeted approach, so you will bring the right audience to your brand.
3. Reduces expenses. Who doesn't love saving money? Or at least utilizing it more efficiently. With inbound marketing, you're lowering your customer acquisition cost -- the amount of money you spend to gain a new customer. Inbound marketing draws in more highly engaged prospects, so you're getting a better ROI (Return on Investment) or "bang for your buck" as they say.

Get to Know Your Customer -- Seriously!

Like I've mentioned in a previous blog post -- there's nothing more powerful to a marketer than knowing what your customer wants. One of the best ways to get to know your customer is to create a buyer persona -- a fictionalized representation of your ideal customer which is comprised of demographic insights and buying insights. Once set, it can help you understand customer prospects better, which you can then tailer content that attracts this kind of person (referring back to generating that quality traffic!). Click here for a step-by-step on creating your own buyer persona.

Getting to know your customer on a deeper level allows for you to develop an inbound strategy that is personalized for different segments of your audience. Conducting research, (like interviews and surveys) to gain this knowledge, reveals the attitude and aspects of a consumer that can gage how you structure and execute your content strategy.

Content Marketing

This is an inbound marketing technique that is focused on creating valuable and relevant content to attract a specific audience, ultimately to convert a person into a profitable action and retain the customer relationship.

Spotify's Unforgettable Strategy

When pondering which brand demonstrates this well, Spotify immediately is the first to pop up. Specifically, I'm thinking of the reason people look forward to December...no not the holiday's...Spotify Wrapped!

Spotify Wrapped is a representation of data compiled through your Spotify listenings throughout the course of the year. It is then displayed in a "story" format, with several slides of insightful stats like "number of minutes listened" and "most played song". It ends with screenshot-able images of the recap of your top artists and songs which is most reposted on Instagram and Twitter. This campaign strategy has not failed to show exponential growth every year since it launched in 2016. Take a look at last year's stats. The combination between the personalization and desire to repost is unmatched. The statistics are both valuable and relevant, and even those of someone else's.

Supposedly, this idea started through an intern's project, which then turned into one of the greatest marketing campaigns (in my opinion). So what are you waiting for? Start brainstorming the world's next greatest engaging piece of content through the remarkable inbound strategy you just read about! If you're lucky, I'll write about it too.

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