Definition: Inbound Marketing

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With the development of means of communication, different marketing strategies are implemented by companies to reach their target. Today, the term Inbound marketing is increasingly recurrent, because it is particularly effective in bringing customers to businesses. What is it exactly?

What is inbound marketing?

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It’s about a innovative marketing techniqueThe term was first used by Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan. They realized that they had the possibility of transforming prospects into customers simply by running a blog.

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The traffic generated by this platform could therefore be monetized by promoting a product that they would like to sell. This is how they gave birth to HubSpot and how, following their experience, inbound marketing became a now popular term.

What characterizes an inbound marketing strategy

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The establishment of a inbound marketing strategy meets certain requirements. First of all, you need to identify what we call buyer personas. These are the ideal customer profiles that you define following a study of the market in which you operate. This allows you to integrate the behavior of your potential customers, their desires and their challenges. So you will know exactly how to proceed so that your strategy reaches your target efficiently.

what is inbound marketing

After this stage comes that of content creation. This is necessary to attract the attention of prospects who you want to turn into customers. You can, through content creation, optimize your visibility on the internet and position yourself, at best in internet search results. Content creation should ideally be carried out by professionals. It takes a multitude of forms depending on your target audience. Varied content (photos, videos, texts, etc.) published on different channels at a constant pace is a good thing for your inbound marketing strategy. In all cases, qualitative, optimized and above all targeted content will be excellent for your strategy..

inbound marketing vs. outbound marketing

In the following, think about create a website that attracts traffic. This is not necessarily simple, since you have to offer personalized content that speaks to each visitor. It is based on the profiles and commitment of the audience you are targeting and that you have that all this is refined. A well-built and optimized website, it is in a way the tool which will allow the generation of traffic and the conversion through this means of your visitors into leads. The last step of inbound marketing is the use of a marketing automation software to facilitate the marketing strategy and personalize the experiences of each prospect in order to convert them into a customer.

The difference with outbound marketing

Outbound does the opposite of what inbound does, namely thathe uses generally intrusive advertisements to attract the prospect. This marketing method is traditional and considered aggressive for potential customers who are almost forced to take an interest in the product offered. Other methods exist, such as, for example, lead nurturing which is very popular with prospects and various leads. Also, inbound marketing is different, because it much more subtly invites the prospect to be interested in a product, or even to buy it.

How to set up an effective inbound marketing campaign?

You now know a little more about inbound marketing, but you still have to move from theory to practice. Unfortunately, this is often much easier said than done. Rest assured, we are not going to leave you without a solution. Here are the main steps to create and succeed in your advertising campaign.inbound marketing.

The first step will be to define and create your “buyer personas”. You will thus be able to better understand the behavior, needs and objectives that will transform your visitors and prospects into customers. For this, you have several possible criteria, such as the demographic data or the sources of information of your prospects. You will then need to set clear, involving and above all measurable objectives, otherwise there is a strong chance that your campaign will only serve to waste your time and money. Finally, you will need to create the content that you are going to offer to your visitors.

Concerning the content, it can be of several types:

• information content such as e-books, white papers or case studies
• accompanying content
• content of interest: for example, we could cite product demonstrations or simply discount coupons

If you want a little more detail on everything we have just mentioned, we invite you to click on the link found in this paragraph.