Why sharing is caring
Inbound is about creating and sharing content with your target market. By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your ideal customers, inbound attracts qualified prospects to your business and keeps them coming back for more.
Pioneered by HubSpot in the early 2000s, inbound marketing has become a cost-effective marketing method for doing business online.
Instead of relying on ‘outbound’ methods of buying ads or mailing lists and hoping for leads, inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people ‘in’ to your company and product.
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.
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.)
Are you inbound marketing ready? Here’s our five signs:
Attitude ready
Are you willing to consistently execute? You can’t just send one email that doesn’t sell 100 units so you give up. You have to be focused on building relentlessly, accepting that this online marketing approach is about steadily creating momentum, not finding some miracle marketing tactic.
Knowledge ready
With modern online marketing being focused on sharing useful knowledge with your customers, not marketing fluff. That knowledge will exist in your organisation, it’s just a matter of organising it and publishing it in a useful way.
Channel-ready
You have a good website, and strong content, but you still need someone to actually visit your website and engage. Email databases, social media channels (such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, SlideShare and Pinterest), a publicity plan and advertising channels are all worth trying.
Measurement ready
Today there is no excuse to not track all of your marketing efforts all of the time, from when a prospect first makes contact through to becoming a loyal customer.
Web ready
That is, having a simple, clear website that can be easily and regularly updated, with the ability to capture visitor information through landing pages.