Are you working on a marketing plan for your business? Then you might have heard about “inbound marketing”. What exactly is this inbound marketing? How is it tuning out traditional marketing strategy? How does the inbound marketing methodology work?
If you are new to inbound marketing concept then you are at the right place. In this article, you will receive a detailed structure of inbound marketing.
What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is a data-driven technique that mainly focuses on attracting individuals to your website. Thereby, converts the visitors into lasting customers. Inbound marketing basically targets customers through various online platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, blogs and more.
The ultimate way to generate the traffic to your website is through “inbound links”. These inbound links have the capability to maximize the visibility of your content.
What makes inbound different from traditional approach?
| Traditional Approach | Inbound Approach |
|---|---|
| Cold calling and emails | Search engine optimization |
| Irrelevant content and ads | Guest blogging and guest posting |
| Marketer centric strategy | Effective and attractive content and ads |
| Customer-centric approach |
An inbound methodology is a powerful approach, it consists of four stages which convert the stranger into a customer.
Attract – Driving unqualified leads to your website is no longer useful. You should only focus on quality traffic who are likely to convert for the product or the service that your website is offering. There are many tools that can attract qualified customers to your websites such as blogging, social media marketing, and free services.
Convert – Once your website attracts the right customers, it’s important for you to know customer information like name, email id and contact information. The tools which are used for converting visitors to leads are CTA (call to action), landing page, and forms.
Close – When a right lead gets converted to your website, you need to maintain the lasting relationship with that customer. Emails, CRM and marketing automation tools are used during the “close” stage.
Delight – In this stage, you should keep on delighting your customers. By providing delightful services you can convert your customers into promoters. Survey’s, follow up and emails are some of the tools that can help you in delighting your customer.
Following are the hand-picked inbound marketing tools that can help to increase your customers and leads.
Hubspot
Hubspot is all in one marketing website and an award-winning marketing tool. It offers a huge range of services such as sales, marketing, CRM, customer support and many more. It also helps to create a dynamic landing page for your website. By using this software, you can increase the conversion rate on your website. Currently, more than 56,400 customers in 100 countries are making the use of Hubspot inbound marketing tool to grow their business.
Constant Contact
According to a marketing survey, email has the highest ROI. Constant Contact is a popular effective email marketing tool for small businesses. It makes powerful email marketing simple and user-friendly. You can create and share email within seconds. With the constant contact, you can drag and drop with ease, personalize your brand logo and send to your targeted contacts. Constant Contact offers with a 60-day free trial for their customers.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite marketing tool can manage all your social media activities on a single dashboard. It improves your social media presence and saves time as it schedules all your social media posts. By Scheduling posts, you can be consistent and stay connected with your audience.
With effective reporting, you can measure social media campaigns easily. The plans are ranging from professional to enterprise.
OneSignal
Push notifications allow real-time conversations easy. Handling a push notification with one signal is a great way to reach customers. This software makes a push notification simple and effective. You can get in touch with your subscriber whenever you introduce a new product, service or anything.
It can send up to 15 million messages per minute. The attractive features of OneSignal include 15 minutes installation setup, segmentation targeting, real-time tracking, and automatic delivery.
Wistia
Video marketing has become a new trend across the world. More than 68% of the companies are taking advantage of using videos in their content. They strongly believe that video will generate a good return on investment. If you are looking for a video marketing software, then Wistia is the right choice for you. It is an outstanding video hosting platform.
The features offered by wistia are marketing automation, video management, embedded video, timeline actions, video SEO and more. Design professional videos in a few minutes with Soapbox. The pricing for business beginners and pioneers is free. The professional plan starts at $99 per month.
SurveyMonkey
Surveys play a crucial role in marketing. Conducting a survey will often lead to better business decisions. SurveyMonkey is a popular secure survey destination that gathers information and analyses any type of data with easy-to-use builders. With the cloud-based software, you can select a custom template. Additionally, you can conduct a survey through text, email or social media platforms.
This software is trusted by many businesses across the globe. It builds trust and focuses mainly on your business identity with the fullest extent of supporting cloud software. The Pro plans offer with additional robust features. Plans start at $25.99 per month.
Ahref
If you are planning to increase search traffic for your business then Ahref is the great option for you. It is an all in one software, you can audit the website, research keywords, link building, web monitoring, content research, and explore competitors. The backlinks have a huge impact on your brand prominence in search results. At ahref, the existing tools will frequently update and release new features within a short period.
Ahref has 4 pricing plans that are ranging from $99 to $999 per month. At the initial state, get started with a one-week trail plan at $7.
Clearbit
Understanding your customer is key to producing a high-quality product or service. Considering customer significance at every stage of the marketing will help the business to create greater customer satisfaction. Get the right data with Clearbit, it is an amazing software that provides robust products and data APIs that helps in your business growth.
Clearbit focuses on the identity of the prospect and customizes every single sale is done and the customer’s interaction. The pricing may vary for enrichment, prospector and reveal. Contact customer support and know more information about pricing.
Buffer
Social media marketing is a great approach for any business to reach its prospects. If you are planning for a cheap and effective social media marketing tool, then Buffer is the best tool for you to reach your targeted audience. You can schedule a post according to your preferences and check analytics for all your social media accounts under one roof.
The products offered by the buffer are publish, reply, analyze and more. To get started with a buffer tool, no credit card is required. The standard pro plan starts from $10 per month.
Unbounce
Landing pages are important for an online marketing strategy that increases the conversion ratio of your business. The magic happens here at the landing page where the visitor transforms into a customer. Unbounce is the popular landing page builder that converts more traffic and no special coding is required. It offers a mobile-responsive landing page and sticky bar templates.
Currently, more than 15,000 brands are driving traffic with this tool. The enterprise plan starting from $399 per month and a premium plan starting at $159 per month.
Final Thoughts
Inbound tools will help you to increase the traffic, leads, and conversion rate for your business. According to market insights, more than 54% leads are generated by using inbound when compared to outbound. The cost for inbound leads and marketing channel is less compared to outbound marketing. With the help of these inbound tools, you can increase the productivity of your business.
