What is Inbound marketing, and how can it grow my business?

This post was originally posted by the team on our Growth Marketing Blog.

You own a shop and somebody walks in off the street one day. They like what they see, you get talking to them, you show them some of your products, you even paint a picture of what your products could do for them. Then they buy something, and – over time – they become a regular customer.

That’s the basic principle and theory behind Inbound marketing on the internet. But everybody is different; in the example above what attracted that specific shopper to that specific shop? What was it about the story you told that made them want to buy the product? How can we capture that essence and use it to attract more shoppers and turn them into a solid long-term loyal customer base?

That’s the problem the vast majority of businesses across the globe face, especially when they start out and are looking for ways to grow and expand.

Marketing isn’t an exact science. It never has been; internally for companies it’s a loss-making department to make other areas of the business more attractive to potential clients to bring revenue in through other channels.

That’s changed though with Inbound marketing. Software and techniques are available to give marketers information they’ve never had access to before, from how website visitors interact with certain pages, the time they spend on a site, location information, and other hugely valuable metrics.

The evolution of data capture software and the emergence of the social web has also been invaluable to businesses in reaching out to new local customers and building a relationship with them.

Despite all the money they cost a television, radio, or magazine ads simply can’t give you that kind of information or control over your campaign. Statistics are assumptive and estimated at best. Inbound marketing can; here’s how you can use it to attract customers, even before they want to make a purchase.

The cornerstones of Inbound

Inbound marketing is a long-term game that has potential to yield an excellent ROI for investors looking to grow and beat the competition. Even better, the sheer amount of Inbound options available means you can construct an incredibly creative campaign and have fun while doing it.

The Inbound methodology

HubSpot describes Inbound as "the most effective marketing method for doing business online. Instead of the old outbound marketing methods of buying ads, buying email lists, and praying for leads, inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people toward your company and product, where they naturally want to be. By aligning the content you publish with your customer’s interests, you naturally attract inbound traffic that you can then convert, close, and delight over time."

A huge part of Inbound marketing is about building trust and being genuinely helpful for potential customers. It’s also about having an active online presence, and where possibly, personalising your interactions for your prospects. Inbound is about aligning different digital channels with a coherent message and “nudging” a consumer towards a goal. It’s not about interrupting them with a broadcast message. Here are some of the ways it’s done:

Search marketing

Ever searched for something in Google (or Bing…) and wondered why certain websites are top of the pile? Search marketing helps websites climb up the search engine rankings; the higher your site the more likely it is to be explored by searchers specifically looking for the products and services you provide.

Google have changed the way they rank content (much to the frustration of many a brand and SEO manager), but one thing always reigns true, they are trying to make search as useful to the user as possible. Helpful content, is winning content.

Social media marketing

The explosion of social media has opened up an enormous range of text- and visual-based channels to communicate with people instantly and effectively. A strong social presence opens up two way communication with your future customers. It helps answer queries, spreads interesting content, and builds relationships.

Content marketing

Creative content – whether articles, blogs, images, infographics or video– can be a huge driver of traffic and keeps people coming back for more. Good content is helpful and piques interest with the best pieces shared amongst other potential customers to help spread word of your brand’s message.

Email marketing

Email is still and always has been one of the best ways to reach people directly, so long as it’s constructed in a way that doesn’t send it straight to the spam folder. Emails don’t have to be a hard sales pitch, and it’s another communication channel so long as customer data is gathered ethically. Email is a great way to continue an existing relationship after initial introduction to your brand. It’s perfect for nurturing a customer towards a sale.

Video marketing

You don’t need a studio to make a good commercial video anymore. The power of YouTube and other platforms like Vine and Instagram Video has helped many small businesses explode. It has helped them get their message out to huge target audiences, as well as opening up a new streams of communication and revenue.

There are many other forms of Inbound marketing out there but these are the ones that have been around the longest and arguably deliver the best results. That’s part of the excitement of Inbound marketing; existing methods are constantly evolving and new software is always appearing for companies to get the best from their marketing mix.

Creative Inbound combinations

Another benefit of Inbound – as well as getting your name out there – is that it can reduce your costs per lead and ultimately costs per sale, introducing people to your sales cycle as they come across you via social, email, search, or other marketing method.

It is a long-term game and it’s one of discovery and creativity. But just choosing only one of the above options to grow your businesses is the same as hedging your bets. The best results come from a mix of Inbound methods, complementing each other to reach out to different customers with different needs and wants at different times in different ways.

This is where the creative part comes in. No one business is the same, and whatever model you use you can create a hugely creative Inbound campaign that gets your message across quickly and effectively, captures the right data, generates leads, and opens the buying cycle to customers.

That in turn, with the data collected, helps you refine the buying cycle to improve conversions. If a mix of content and social marketing is bringing people back to a specific page on your website, then what can be done to improve their experience and turn them into long-term customers when they arrive?

Speed it up with Biddable

Inbound marketing isn’t a case of signing up to Twitter and waiting for money to roll in. It’s an education; an audit of where your business currently stands and how it can be improved. The right strategy and a deep understanding of your customers is everything when Inbound marketing.

That’s part of the benefit of it being a long-term strategy. It helps you over the months to realise where your time is best spent, what Inbound methods are most effective, and lets you evolve your creative campaign as time passes.

For quicker results and to target the right people more effectively a lot of brands also like to throw a healthy dose of biddable media into the mix if their budget allows.

Complementing Pay Per Click (PPC), Social PPC (social media ads), sponsored articles and more with a young Inbound strategy helps to attract the right targeted users in the right locations with the right interests sooner and can help you measure the receptiveness and effectiveness of the Inbound campaign you’ve set up sooner.

It can speed up the whole process, and as the Inbound campaign takes hold the Biddable payments can start to whittle down until you’re entirely dependent on your creative efforts. Or, on the other hand, if Biddable is working well for you and the budgets remain then keep it up!

Inbound and Biddable go well hand-in-hand, as do a lot of other creative marketing methods. For the business looking to grow, though, an Inbound strategy at base level is key to future success and building up a brand that tells a story and keeps customers coming back.

Want to learn more about Inbound? Check out the HubSpot 2015 State of Inbound report.