How to use Inbound Marketing in 2023
As 74% of marketers worldwide use inbound marketing as their primary approach, those in all industries are clamouring to learn more about incorporating the practice into their strategy. But what exactly is inbound marketing? How does it work? And why is it so crucial for businesses?
What is Inbound Marketing in 2023
Inbound marketing is a marketing approach focusing on attracting customers organically rather than traditional outbound methods like advertising or cold-calling.
Inbound marketing is about creating valuable content that pulls customers towards your brand instead of pushing your products or services onto them. This type of marketing is often called 'pull' marketing because it relies on customers coming to you instead of you having to go out and find them.
So why is inbound marketing so important for businesses? Because it's an effective way to reach your target audience without resorting to intrusive or interruptive methods. Creating relevant and valuable content for your potential customers can attract them to your brand and build trust and credibility over time.
If you're interested in incorporating inbound marketing into your business strategy, this guide will show you everything you need to know about how it works and why it's so effective.
Inbound vs Outbound
Inbound marketing is about creating content that naturally attracts potential customers to your business. This could be anything from blog posts and social media content to eBooks and webinars. The key is to produce high-value content that will interest your target audience.
On the other hand, outbound marketing is a traditional approach where businesses interrupt consumers' everyday lives with advertising messages. This might include TV and radio ads, billboards, and direct mail. While this approach can still be effective, it can be harder to reach consumers who are now used to ignoring these marketing messages.
Both inbound and outbound marketing strategies have their own advantages and disadvantages, so choosing the right one depends on your specific business goals is important.
Inbound techniques
Blogging is one of several Inbound techniques. Any form of creating and distributing content can be referred to as Inbound. For example, you create a video on YouTube that gets many views, and some of those viewers visit your website. Or you upload it to Twitter, which results in new followers.
One key factor to remember with Inbound is that it’s gradual, and you shouldn't expect immediate results. When you create content, you usually need a lot of time for it to position itself and generate traffic to your website.
The good thing about Inbound is that when you know how to do it well, you are guaranteed to attract high-quality traffic in a sustainable way over time (and at a lower cost).
Outbound techniques
Outbound is the complete opposite of Inbound when it comes to marketing. With Outbound, businesses 'push' their ads and messages to potential customers rather than waiting for them to come to them. This method is typically faster; businesses can see if it's working almost instantly. Outbound is also ideal for validating business ideas and seeing if certain messages work.
These are the main Inbound and Outbound channels in 2023
Example
Types of Inbound Marketing in 2023
- Videos
- Blogs
- Pillar pages
- eBooks
- Social media
- Press releases
- Infographics
- Newsletters
- Research papers
- Podcasts
- Webinars
- Expert interviews
Inbound Marketing Methodology
Inbound marketing creates lasting, genuine customer interactions that help grow your business. To make it simple, you just need to follow three steps:
1. Attract the right demographics. Research relevant keywords and trends before publishing content to ensure you're attracting your ideal customer base.
2. Engage with your audience. Once you've attracted potential customers, engage with them by offering solutions to their problems. Show them that you're an authority in your field, and they'll be more likely to buy from you down the road.
3. Delight your customers. Continue to engage with them even after they've made a purchase - the goal is to create trust between your brand and your customers. Provide them with the tools and knowledge they need to succeed in their markets, and they'll keep coming back for more.
Inbound Marketing Strategies in 2023
These strategies will help you effectively engage your target audience. Below you will see that for each inbound method. There are specific strategies to attract, engage and inspire customers to push the money needle and your business to grow better.
Attraction strategies
Inbound marketing strategies that appeal to your target audience and buyer personas involve content creation and development.
To reach your target audience, you should create and publish content that adds value, such as blog articles, content offers and social media.
Examples include:
- Instructions on how to use your products.
- Information on how your solution can solve their problems.
- Testimonials from customers and details of promotions or discounts.
To engage your target audience deeper through inbound marketing, you should optimise all this content with an SEO strategy. An SEO strategy requires you to target specific keywords and phrases related to your products or services, the challenges you solve for your customers and how you help members of your target audience.
This way, your content and information can organically appear on the search engine results page (SERP) for those searching for that information - also known as your target audience or the right customers for your business.
Inbound strategies
When using inbound strategies to engage your target audience, make sure you communicate and interact with prospects and customers in a way that makes them want to build a long-term relationship with you. When using these engagement strategies, you should provide information about your business's value.
Specific retention strategies include how you handle and manage your incoming sales calls. Focus on how customer service representatives handle calls from prospects and potential customers. Also, make sure that you always sell solutions and not products. This way, you ensure that all business deals result in mutual benefits for the customer and your company - i.e. you provide value to your customers who are a good fit for you.
Delighting strategies
Delighting inbound strategies ensures that customers remain happy, satisfied and cared for long after purchasing. These strategies involve team members becoming advisors and experts who always support customers.
Using thoughtful, well-timed chatbots and surveys to support, assist and solicit customer feedback is a great way to engage these people. Bots and surveys should be used at specific points throughout the customer journey to ensure they are meaningful and add value.
For example, chatbots can help current customers set up a new technique or tactic you offer that they want to use. In addition, a satisfaction survey can be sent out six months after a product or service purchase to gather customer feedback and consider suggestions for improvement.
Listening on social media is another important strategy for engaging customers. Followers on social media can use one of your profiles to provide feedback, ask questions or share their experiences with your products or services. Respond to these interactions with information that helps, supports and encourages your followers - this shows that you are listening to them and care about them.
Finally, an inbound strategy that focuses on customer satisfaction stands out because it helps and supports customers in every situation, whether or not your business benefits. Remember that a satisfied customer becomes an advocate and promoter of your brand, so treat all interactions, big or small, with care.
Is Inbound Marketing worth the hustle?
Setting up and maintaining inbound marketing can cost time and resources. However, it is an effective strategy for your business and sales figures.
The essential pros of Inbound Marketing in 2023
It's cost-effective
It is statistically proven that inbound leads cost on average 61% less than outbound leads while delivering ten times more effective lead conversions than outbound leads.
Increase brand awareness
Regularly creating and distributing valuable content provides an almost priceless opportunity to educate your customers about your brand. Inbound marketing lets you inform your customers about your services and leave a solid, trustworthy impression on potential and returning customers.
It can generate more traffic and leads.
Since it is easier to track and gain insights from inbound marketing, businesses can easily find out which content is successful for them and boost their efforts accordingly. This way, more visitors and leads can be generated.
Synchronising sales and marketing
As inbound marketing content provides a solution to the needs of potential customers, input from the sales team is essential. This breaks down barriers between sales and marketing teams and enables a more productive flow of information to achieve the common goal of increasing traffic, leads and revenue.
It provides lasting content.
Your company's content remains online permanently unless you actively decide to remove it.
Outbound marketing tactics such as flyers and large-scale billboard advertising are removed after the end of a specific campaign or after a set period, meaning these methods are brutal for potential customers to remember.
With inbound marketing, on the other hand, this is not a problem. This type of marketing is mainly digital or requires some interaction so that it can remain online indefinitely for customers.
It's also a good idea to keep some of the older inbound marketing content online, as this will help promote the longevity of your business and give potential customers the feeling that they can trust the brand after seeing previous interactions with other customers.
As digital marketing techniques become more prevalent, inbound marketing is an increasingly effective strategy for driving results. Inbound marketing typically yields a higher return on investment and creates brand loyalty among customers.
This is because inbound marketing strategies are designed to adapt to the changing behaviours of customers in the digital landscape. As customer values and behaviour evolve, inbound marketing allows businesses to effectively build relationships with potential customers.
By combining inbound marketing with other digital marketing tools, businesses can reach new and existing customers and create a stronger foundation for their brand.
Our hyper-growth knowledge provides you with the essentials for building your lethal sales machinery. However, without further guidance on how to grow your business, it is hard to dominate your competition. Use our exclusive step-by-step framework for growing 10x faster, better and smarter in any industry, market, or niche. Enjoy results and create a user experience that is dopamine for your customer's brains at every step of their journey with your business.
We deeply understand our customers to deliver high-quality results. Startups and SMEs without the support of a full-time marketing team often struggle to keep up with competitors — and leaving their marketing efforts to chance is a recipe for disaster. When you use our on-demand marketing solutions, you benefit from personalised, sustainable and reliable customer acquisition strategies that help build your business.
About the Author
Patrick Mehrhoff is the founder and master builder of MEHRHOFF DIGITAL. Before founding the digital marketing and business development consultancy, Patrick established the marketing departments for the two most successful Swiss FinTech startups, MoneyPark and Crypto Finance. Both companies generated an exit value that exceeded 400 million with a valuation of over two bn. Patrick is a German national, a Certified FinTech Professional from the University of Hong Kong, and holds an MBA from the Power Business School.