There are many ways to get customers for your small business. From digital advertising to word-of-mouth marketing, you can take advantage of various strategies. However, not all strategies are created equal. Some pack a harder punch than others, and one is called inbound marketing.
A great way to connect with and influence customers, inbound marketing is all about developing content that fosters long-term relationships. The content is typically educational, unique, engaging, and value-driven, helping establish trust and credibility. The best part? Inbound marketing doesn’t explicitly sell as much as it creates a foundation that naturally attracts customers. It’s inherently different from outbound marketing, which focuses on selling, selling, and more selling.
In fact, the differences between inbound and outbound marketing are so vast that you can create a long list outlining the contrasts. Some of the points on that list will say that inbound marketing:
- Increases leads and sales with a “pull” method
- Provides a cost-effective approach to generating revenue
- Utilizes digital content to speak to a specific audience
- Fosters two-way interaction
- Seeks to educate and entertain
- Employs blogs, social media, SEO, e-books, emails, webinars, and whitepapers to build customer relationships
- Employs a multi-channel approach, relying on many different digital mediums
When it comes to outbound marketing, on the other hand, that list will provide different characteristics. For example, it’ll say that outbound marketing:
- Uses a “push” method to increase sales and leads
- Breaks the banks as it can be very expensive
- Captures and converts a target audience using non-digital content
- Focuses on one-way communication
- Seeks to sell instead of educate and entertain
- Utilizes direct mail, print, media ads, and TV ads
- Relies on a linear approach to targeting and acquiring customers
This list could include more differences, but it’s already easy to see how much inbound marketing and outbound marketing contrast. Now, it’s just a matter of understanding why your small business should prioritize and implement the more modern and innovative discipline.
The Benefits of Inbound Marketing
When it comes to inbound marketing, the benefits abound. One reason is that people prefer to connect with brands, and inbound marketing ensures it happens. Another reason is that so many popular marketing tactics fall into the inbound marketing category. For simplicity’s sake, this article will only dive into three tactics, but it’ll walk through each of their specific benefits.
1. Benefits of Content Marketing
Content marketing is all about sharing knowledge with your target audience through blogs, articles, whitepapers, e-books, and more. The benefits of this tactic are as follows:
- Sixty-one percent of people like it when brands create custom content.
- Developing content doubles conversion rates.
- Businesses that create content will experience six times more conversions than brands that don’t publish content.
- Compared to traditional marketing, content generates 54% more leads.
2. Benefits of SEO
SEO helps your ideal customer discover your brand when typing a relevant keyword into search engines. The benefits of SEO include the following:
- Ninety-three of online experiences start with a search engine.
- Eighty-nine percent of marketers agree that SEO is successful.
- For e-commerce brands, 37% of traffic comes from search engines.
- Seventy percent of people research a brand online before purchasing from or visiting a business.
3. Benefits of Social Media
A social media strategy involves you connecting and engaging with your target audience through Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and more. Here are the benefits of using social media:
- After following a brand on social media, 87% of people will visit the company’s website.
- Seventy-seven percent of people buy from companies they follow on social media.
- Sixty-seven percent of people increase their spending with a company after becoming one of its social media followers.
- 80% of people look to social media for advice about which product to buy.
Content marketing, SEO, and social media are the most utilized inbound marketing tactics, and it’s primarily because their benefits are real and significant. Many companies catapult their brand’s success simply by having exceptional content that’s SEO-optimized and an engaging, consistent presence on social media. However, that success doesn’t happen without high-performing tools.
5 Inbound Marketing Tools
If you want to start implementing inbound marketing, you should utilize tools to increase your success. This suggestion doesn’t mean you have to use any and every inbound marketing tool that’s on the market. However, it does mean you should lean on some platforms, especially if they’ll help you with specific tactics like SEO, content creation, and social media. With that being said, here are five fantastic inbound marketing tools that you may want to get.
1. HubSpot (Marketing Automation Tool)
One of the most well-known leaders in the inbound marketing space, Hubspot is an all-in-one suite that makes it easy to create and optimize content for success. With this platform, you can develop lead magnets, landing pages, and email marketing campaigns to nurture your target audience. You can also automate routine tasks, improve marketing segmentation to enhance results, and access a plethora of data to continue getting better.
2. Drift (Live Chat Tool)
Want to answer questions and meet your web visitors’ needs quickly? Then, you need a live chat tool. Drift is one of the best. It relies on live chatbots and machine learning to engage visitors in a natural, interactive way. It’s the perfect platform for your customer success team, but it’s also great for your sales team as well. Drift can prequalify leads and prospects before sending them to your sales reps so that interactions are more purposeful.
3. SEMRush (Content Marketing & SEO Tool)
You can find many different content marketing and SEO tools, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one as good as SEMRush. This platform is the ultimate inbound marketing tool that helps you research keywords, track keyword rankings, view backlinks, and optimize content for search engines. The platform even scores written content to see if it’s optimized for a keyword and able to compete with high-ranking articles and resources.
4. Optinmonster (Lead Capture Tool)
You need a platform that can help you get web visitors into a deeper relationship with your brand, and that’s where Optinmonster can help. This inbound marketing tool assists with lead capture, allowing you to capture emails or send website traffic to high-converting landing pages.
With Optinmonster, you can utilize popup tools to catch your audience’s attention and entice them to take another step. Additionally, Optinmonster lets you manage dozens of campaigns so that you have multiple ways to convert and monetize your website traffic.
5. MailChimp (Email Marketing Tool)
No matter what anyone says, email marketing isn’t dead. It’s very much alive and necessary for business success. If you want to implement it, you should consider using MailChimp, a standalone email marketing platform equipped with templates in case you don’t want to design one.
MailChimp enables you to test different email formats, manage sign-ups, track campaigns, and segment email subscribers. It’s a must-have inbound marketing tool if you want your small business to nurture and deepen relationships with potential and current customers.
The Best Marketing Discipline
Inbound marketing is the best discipline for any business owner to implement. It’s cost-effective and offers many benefits, and there are plenty of inbound marketing tools that can enhance the success of any campaign or effort. The only thing you need to do is choose which inbound marketing tactics you’ll implement and pick the platforms that’ll best suit your company’s needs.