Have you heard of Inbound Marketing? Do you know what makes it different from Social Media Marketing or Content Marketing? Terms in the field of online marketing seem to evolve and change at breakneck speed, and sometimes it is difficult to follow the thread. However, you don’t have to worry. Today we are here to clear all your doubts about it and tell you how to create an Inbound Marketing strategy step by step and all the tools you can use for it.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound Marketing or attraction marketing is a set of non-intrusive marketing techniques (SEO, content marketing, mailingweb analytics, social networks, databases…) that allow creating value for the client and thereby getting their interest and attraction.
The term, coined in 2007 by Brian Halligan, president of Hubspot, gave rise to a 2009 book on the subject that he published with Dharmesh Shah, and the creation of the Inbound Marketing University. Since then, the term has crossed borders and has taken on special relevance in the world of online marketing, since it is a system that encompasses practically all the functionalities of online marketing but aimed more thoroughly at the achievement of objectives, in addition to taking into account a new philosophy when coming into contact with the user or target audience.
When we talk about Inbound Marketing strategy, we therefore focus on creating a relationship of interest between company-client based on these 4 steps:
- Attract: For this we have to offer a complete content strategy focused on the interests of the client in order to be present at the moment they seek us.
- Convert: Thanks to the relationship that is maintained with users, we can obtain their contact information to have a more direct relationship with them.
- Close: Whether the user who interacts with us thanks to the added value we provide becomes our client depends on our closing strategy.
- Delight: The last step is to put the final touch on the sale in order not only to retain the customer but also to have him as a prescriber.
Much has been said about the keys to success in a good Inbound Marketing strategy, and for this reason, we want to summarize them below:
- The creation of content with a true value for the client. Creating corporate content in which we talk about the company and the product is NOT valuable content.
- Adequate dissemination through the channels that best suit our target audience.
- Content with character and personality to generate empathy with the public.
- General a good analysis of the actions to see what works and what does not work, and therefore know what to promote and what to eliminate from our strategy.
Inbound Marketing Glossary
Within this new way of doing marketing we find a large number of new terms that it is essential to control before launching an Inbound Marketing strategy. Next, we define the main ones:
The Inbound Marketing strategy step by step
Now that we know what it is, it is time to know how to implement an Inbound Marketing strategy from the beginning until the achievement of the sales objectives. We will therefore speak of a circular process in which we will continuously try to develop each of the phases, since we will have clients in all of them.
Definition
First of all, we must analyze and define the situation by asking ourselves questions such as: Who are we?, What is our product like?, Who are our clients?, What are our objectives and main mission?, What differentiates our product from the competition?…
It is at this first point where our buyer personas examples and templates will be of great help, where the life cycle of the product/service will be analyzed as well as the purchase cycle, the initial situation of our presence on the network (web, blog , social networks, opinions, SEO…) and the KPIs will be established.
It is also important to identify our resources: time, people, budget, tools, knowledge…
Inbound Marketing Strategy
Once we are clear about all the previous points, it will be time to get started following the particular objectives of each phase that will mark a specific path for us. Thus, concentrating our efforts on the objective of each phase, we multiply the opportunities to achieve success or the final objective: the sale.
PHASE 1: ATTRACT
What we are looking for in this first phase of the Inbound Marketing strategy is the attraction of users and potential customers. For this, it will be very important to have correctly defined our buyer persona or ideal client, and know everything about them: what kind of information they consume, by what means, how often, why, what formats they like best…
All this information will be of great help to create the content plan or content marketing strategy that will be essential to implement in this first phase. Thus, we will define the keywords, we will optimize our social networks (design and texts), our website (SEO and design), we will look for collaborators and influencers To make ourselves known, we will make a content and dissemination calendar, etc.
Do not forget the importance of disseminating content, for which you will have to know how to do a good job of Community Manager sharing your content on different channels, and even investing in advertising to increase your visibility on search engines and social networks.
PHASE 2: CONVERT
Now that we have traffic and recurring visits, we are going to try to get the so famous leads, that is, personal data that allows us to have more direct contact with the client. In this sense, we can classify the leads in three stages depending on the proximity lead cold, lead Marketing Qualified (MQL) and lead qualified for sale (SQL).
We can use different channels and strategies to attract leads, for example: email marketing, landing pagesfree ebook downloads, forms, free webinars, subscription content…
establish a good call to action and one Thank you page In this phase of our Inbound Marketing strategy it is really important and can be crucial for the efficiency of your recruitment strategy leads. Knowing how to correctly manage a database (database) with all the customer details with a tool designed for this will also be of great help, especially in terms of saving time and connection between the different phases of our strategy.
For this phase, our post will be of great help: Lead capture strategies: How to get clients?
PHASE 3: CLOSE
In the closing phase of our Inbound Marketing strategy, what we hope is to get those who were first our visitors and then our fans or friends, to become customers, that is, we look for the sale of our product or service.
For this, we will use all our sales weapons. A good one sale page to which we will redirect users, email marketing campaigns focused on sales and good management of our database, personalizing the contact with the user to the maximum, will be some of the elements that will allow us to achieve success at this crucial moment in our strategy. It is time to know if all our previous efforts are really going to bring us a real economic benefit, a sale.
At this stage it is also important to know the customer interests and the phase of the buying cycle in which they are in order to meet their expectations. Based on this, we will present our offer in one way or another. Let’s take a deeper look at this point!
He buying cycle It is the process that a user goes through from when they have a problem or need until they find or buy something to solve it, and we can divide it into 4 phases (AIDA):
- Attention (Awareness): identifies the problem or need.
- Investigation (interests): Look for ways to fix it.
- Decision (Decision): analyzes the different alternatives and their characteristics (price, benefits, delivery time…).
- Action (action): you make the purchase to satisfy your need or solve the problem.
Depending on the type of customer and product/service, each company must thoroughly analyze the purchasing cycle that its customers go through and what bumps they encounter in order to streamline the process as much as possible and modify the type of offer depending on the phase in which our client is. In this sense we talk about:
- TOFU Offers: His initials refer to top of the funnel (at the top of the funnel) and it is about the offer that the company has to give when the user has found a problem or need and is looking for solutions. At this time, the user needs effective information to help them clarify and therefore blogs, infographics, ebooks and webinars are excellent information formats to capture their attention.
- MOFU Offers: your initials middle of the funnel (in the middle of the funnel) refer to the user who is evaluating different alternatives. At this time, commercial information such as price, advantages and disadvantages, characteristics, guides, reports, opinions of other users… will be important.
- BOFU Offers: your initials bottom of the funnel (in the lower part of the funnel) refers to the moment in which the user is going to purchase the product that solves the problem. At this time, any additional advantage such as a discount, offer or added value may be the differential element.
In the closing phase of our Inbound Marketing strategy, we will take all these factors into account, and we will treat each client in a different way in order to reach them at the right time with the type of information they need. And for this, nothing better than having a complete database with information worked on from the early stages of the process. It is at this time that CRM and automation tools will make special sense for making our lives much easier when contacting each type of client.
PHASE 4: DELIGHT
And although we think that the objective has been achieved, the truth is that the path of our Inbound Marketing strategy does not end here. Now comes the time to get our customers to become recurring customers, or better yet, prescribers of our products and/or services.
It is at this moment where we can surprise you with an excellent home delivery service (a lack of many ecommerces), conduct surveys to find out what they think about our product/service or offer added value by prescription to other users, are some of the good practices that you can implement in this crucial phase.
Analysis
Although the analysis of results will be done in each previous phase, it will be important cross data at the end to interpret the final conclusions and improve the established process as soon as possible in order to get the…