What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is the opposite of outbound marketing.
Outbound marketing
Outbound marketing means that the company markets itself through traditional TV commercials, banners, telemarketing and advertisements in newspapers and magazines. Here, the company has full control over what is being marketed.
Inbound marketing
Inbound marketing isn't about pushing marketing out, but rather drawing potential customers in, for example through knowledge content and marketing automation. This makes online inbound marketing a much less aggressive way for companies to market themselves.
An example of inbound marketing
An example could be
A male visitor on Google stumbles upon your website by asking a question in the search engine about flowers that he wants an answer to. Of course, you have written some good content on this topic (if you sell things for flowers) that answers the man's question and therefore your post is one of the highest ranking posts in the search engine for that keyword.
When the visitor enters your website, he reads your content. He is happy and satisfied and even signs up for your newsletter because he 1. could use the information you gave him on the landing page and therefore wants to hear more from your company, or 2. was interested in giving his email in exchange for the super delicious flower guide you send to everyone who signs up for the newsletter.
As soon as he's signed up for the newsletter, your automated email flow starts to warm him up with targeted content about flower arranging so much that this process ends with a sale to the man who just searched for an answer on Google.
Create an inbound marketing campaign
Examples of channels where you can run an inbound marketing campaign:
- Blog posts
- Landing pages
- Lead generation
- Social Media
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Videos
Why inbound marketing?
There are many good reasons to get involved in inbound marketing.
Here you can see a few examples:
- You will be shared. Because inbound marketing is built around content and knowledge sharing, you're giving your customer value before they even spend a dime in your business. This means they are more likely to share your content and thus your brand.
- You build trust. Before you and your customer have started working together, you have shown that you have knowledge in your field, so a different kind of trust has already been built than if you were simply advertising via outbound marketing.
- Google loves it! It's not just your potential customers who share across the board. Google is also very happy to find content that can answer related searches.
- Free marketing. Unlike outbound marketing, where you pay a lot of money to be promoted, you pay nothing for inbound marketing - apart from the time you spend putting together your content, of course.
Do you need help with your inbound marketing? InboundCPH is ready to help. Contact us for a dialog about your wants and needs.
