What is Inbound Marketing And How Is It Different?

Inbound marketing has been the buzzword in marketing for the past few years. It is one of the most talked about terms in Internet marketing circles. It is the new form of marketing that is very different to traditional marketing methods (outbound marketing).

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound Marketing is the process of increasing sales or growing revenue by acquiring a steady stream of qualified leads for the business and converting these leads into customers.

Inbound marketing focuses on creating powerful content to attract the attention of prospective customers, drawing them to your business, and converting them into leads.

Blogs, videos, eBooks, email newsletters, reports & whitepaper, SEO, social media marketing, other forms of content marketing are some examples of inbound marketing techniques.

How is Inbound Marketing Different to Other Advertising Methods?

There is a fundamental difference between inbound marketing and traditional marketing methods often referred to as outbound marketing.

Traditional marketing focuses on taking your message to the masses using direct advertising methods with the hope that some of the consumers may be motivated to avail of the services your business provides. ?Methods such as cold calling, telemarketing, sales visits, paid branding, print advertising, distributing flyers, or sending out bulk emails are some examples of this.

In Inbound marketing, on the other hand, customers are drawn to your business because of content that is of value to them, resulting in much more promising leads.

Traditional advertising targets potentially unqualified leads whereas inbound marketing allows your business to target warm leads i.e. those who are already searching for the products or services you are providing.

Inbound Marketing is a far more efficient and affordable way to acquire new leads. It is more streamlined and provides better ROI than traditional advertising. Inbound marketing leads cost 60 percent less on average than leads generated via traditional outbound marketing methods

How Does Inbound Marketing Work?

There is more to inbound marketing that creating great content that will draw people into your sales process. Having a well optimised website that is able to convert leads into sales is equally important.

The main focus is on the following:

• Producing high quality content that customers find valuable (Blogging, eBooks, Reports, and more)
• Making your business easily found (SEO, Social media, content marketing, and more)
• Optimised website to convert visitors into leads ?(Landing page, call to action, etc.)

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?The Inbound Marketing Model:

The inbound marketing methodology can be best described in five stages (Source: Pollitt, Chad, October 21, 2011):

• Attract traffic
• Convert visitors to leads
• Convert leads to sales
• Turn customers into repeat higher margin customers
• Analyze for continuous improvement

?Inbound Marketing Techniques:

Creating quality content lies at the heart of inbound marketing and fuels majority of the promotional methods.

Following are some popular inbound marketing methods:

• Blogging
• Creating and promoting Videos,
• eBooks,
• Email newsletters,
• Reports & whitepaper,
• SEO,
• Social media marketing
• Conversion optimisation
• Content Curation
• Other forms of content marketing such as content curation, document & image sharing websites

?Drawbacks of Inbound Marketing

While Inbound Marketing will save you money, it does take an ample commitment and patience

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Source: http://www.kronikmedia.co.uk/blog/what-is-inbound-marketing-and-how-is-it-different/5377/

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