The best way to turn
strangers into customers and promoters of your business.
The
proven methodology for the digital age
Since 2006, inbound marketing has been 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.
How to
interpret the graphic
Along the top are the four actions (Attract, Convert, Close,
Delight) inbound companies must take in order to obtain visitors, leads,
customers, and promoters. Along the bottom are the tools companies use to
accomplish these actions. (Note the tools are listed under the action where
they first come into play, but that’s not the only place they’re applicable!
Several tools, like email, can be essential in several stages of the
methodology.)
What is Inbound?
Sharing is caring and inbound is about creating and sharing
content with the world. By creating content specifically designed to appeal to
your dream customers, inbound attracts qualified prospects to your business and
keeps them coming back for more.
Major
themes:
·
Content Creation +
Distribution- Create targeted content that answers prospects' and customers'
basic questions and needs, then share that content far and wide.
·
Lifecycle Marketing-
Promoters don’t just materialize out of thin air: they start off as strangers,
visitors, contacts, and customers. Specific marketing actions and tools help to
transform those strangers into promoters.
·
Personalization-
Tailor your content to the wants and needs of the people who are viewing it. As
you learn more about your leads over time, you can better personalize your
messages to their specific needs.
·
Multi-channel-
Inbound marketing is multi-channel by nature because it approaches people where
they are, in the channel where they want to interact with you.
·
Integration-
Content creation, publishing and analytics tools all work together like a
well-oiled machine - allowing you to focus on publishing the right content in
the right place at the right time.
Make marketing people love.
By publishing the
right content in the right place at the right time, your marketing becomes
relevant and helpful to your customers, not interruptive. Now that’s marketing
people can love.
The Four Marketing Actions
Attract
We don’t want just any traffic to our site, we want the right traffic. We want the people who are
most likely to become leads, and, ultimately, happy customers. Who are the
“right” people? Our ideal customers, also known as our buyer
personas. Buyer personas are holistic ideals of what your customers are
really like, inside and out. Personas encompass the goals, challenges, pain
points, common objections to products and services, as well as personal and
demographic information shared among all members of that particular customer
type. Your personas are the people around whom your whole business is built.
Some of the most important tools to attract the right users to
your site are:
·
Blogging-
Inbound marketing starts with blogging. A blog is the single best way to
attract new visitors to your website. In order to get found by the right
prospective customers, you must create educational content that speaks to them
and answers their questions.
·
SEO-
Your customers begin their buying process online, usually by using a search
engine to find something they have questions about. So, you need to make sure
you’re appearing prominently when and where they search. To do that, you need
to carefully, analytically pick keywords, optimize your pages, create content,
and build links around the terms your ideal buyers are searching for.
·
Pages-
Your website pages are your digital storefront. So put your best face forward!
Optimize your website to appeal to your ideal buyers and transform your website
into a beacon of helpful content to entice the right strangers to visit your
pages.
·
Social Publishing-
Successful inbound strategies are all about remarkable content - and social
publishing allows you to share that valuable information on the social web,
engage with your prospects, and put a human face on your brand. Interact on the
networks where your ideal buyers spend their time. 
Convert
Once you’ve attracted website visitors, the next step is to
convert those visitors into leads by gathering their contact information. At
the very least, you’ll need their email addresses. Contact information is the
most valuable currency there is to the online marketer. So in order for your
visitors to offer up that currency willingly, you need to offer them something
in return! That “payment” comes in the form of content, like eBooks,
whitepapers, or tip sheets - whatever information would be interesting and
valuable to each of your personas.
Some of the most important tools in converting visitors to leads
include:
·
Forms-
In order for visitors to become leads, they must fill out a form and submit
their information. Optimize your form to make this step of the conversion
process as easy as possible.
·
Calls-to-Action-
Calls-to-action are buttons or links that encourage your visitors to take
action, like “Download a Whitepaper” or “Attend a Webinar.” If you don’t have
enough calls-to-action or your calls-to-action aren’t enticing enough, you
won’t generate leads.
·
Landing
Pages- When a website visitor clicks on a call-to-action, they should
then be sent to a landing page. A landing page is where the offer in the
call-to-action is fulfilled, and where the prospect submits information that
your sales team can use to begin a conversation with them. When website
visitors fill out a form on a landing page for the first time, that visitor
becomes a contact.
·
Contacts-
Keep track of the leads you're converting in a centralized marketing database.
Having all your data in one place helps you make sense out of every interaction
you’ve had with your contacts - be it through email, a landing page, social
media, or otherwise - and how to optimize your future interactions to more
effectively attract, convert, close, and delight your buyer personas. 
Close
You’re on the right track. You’ve attracted the right visitors
and converted the right leads, but now you need to transform those leads into
customers. How can you most effectively accomplish this feat? Certain marketing
tools can be used at this stage to make sure you’re closing the right leads at
the right times.
Closing tools include:
·
CRM-
Keep track of the details about all the contacts, companies, and deals in your
pipeline, and easily get in touch with the right prospects at the right time.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems facilitate sales by making sure
you have the right information at your fingertips to better engage with
prospects across every channel.
·
Closed-loop
Reporting- How do you know which marketing efforts are bringing in the
best leads? Is your sales team effectively closing those best leads into
customers? Integration with your CRM system allows you to analyze just how well
your marketing and sales teams are playing together.
·
Email-
What do you do if a visitor clicks on your call-to-action, fills out a landing
page, or downloads your whitepaper, but still isn’t ready to become a customer?
A series of emails focused on useful, relevant content can build trust with a
prospect and help them become more ready to buy.
·
Marketing
Automation- This process involves creating email marketing and lead
nurturing tailored to the needs and lifecycle stage of each lead. For example,
if a visitor downloaded a whitepaper on a certain topic from you in the past,
you might want to send that lead a series of related emails. But if they follow
you on Twitter and visited certain pages on your website, you might wan
t to change the messaging to
reflect those different interests.
Delight
The Inbound way is all about providing remarkable content to our
users, whether they be visitors, leads, or existing customers. Just because
someone has already written you a check doesn’t mean you can forget about them!
Inbound companies continue to engage with, delight, and (hopefully) upsell
their current customer base into happy promoters of the organizations and
products they love.
Tools used to delight customers include:
·
Surveys-
The best way to figure out what your users want is by asking them. Use feedback
and surveys to ensure you’re providing customers with what they’re looking for.
·
Smart
Calls-to-Action- These present different users with offers that change based on
buyer persona and lifecycle stage.
·
Smart
Text- Provide your existing customers with remarkable content
tailored to their interests and challenges. Help them achieve their own goals,
as well as introduce new products and features that might be of interest to
them.
·
Social Monitoring-
Keep track of the social conversations that matter to you most. Listen out for
your customers’ questions, comments, likes, and dislikes – and reach out to
them with relevant content.
A New Methodology
The Inbound Methodology covers each and every step taken, tool
used, and lifecycle stage traveled through on the road from stranger to
customer. It empowers marketers to attract visitors, convert leads, close
customers, and delight promoters. The new methodology acknowledges that inbound
marketing doesn’t just happen, you do it. And you do it using tools and
applications that help you create and deliver content that will appeal to
precisely the right people (your buyer personas) in the right places (channels)
at just the right times (lifecycle stages).
