Inward marketing, also known as inbound marketing, is a marketing approach that concentrates on bringing in potential customers and taking them into your sales funnel. Deploying inbound marketing techniques enables you to attract leads who’ve already expressed some degree of interest in your products or services.
But how does inbound marketing work, and how does it differ from outbound marketing?
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing gains its name because your tactics don’t involve outwardly pushing your message to your target audience. Instead, you rely on user-driven channels to attract leads into your sales pipeline.
Examples of inbound tactics you can use include:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Content marketing
- Influencer marketing
- Social media growth
- Email newsletter marketing
The point of inbound marketing is that your business is there for your audience when they need it. For example, if you’ve got a blog that focuses on solving a particular problem, this is an example of attracting someone using inbound marketing.
Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing is the exact opposite of inward marketing. Also known as interruption marketing, the user hasn’t asked to receive your message. The perfect example of this would be a billboard positioned downtown.
Outbound marketing ads take many forms, including sponsored blog posts, social media advertising, Google ads, digital display ads, and physical ads.
The easiest way to compare the two is that inbound marketing relies on user-driven channels. They get to choose when they interact with your brand, whereas outbound marketing is entirely brand-driven, meaning you control when a prospect sees and interacts with your brand.
The Three Stages of Inward Marketing Funnels
Typically, there are three parts of the inbound marketing funnel businesses focus on. You’ll find several models with varying numbers of stages, but they largely follow the same general blueprint. These are:
- Attract
- Engage
- Convert
Addressing each of these three models takes an interested prospect and leads them toward an eventual purchase.
1. Attract
The attract stage focuses on familiarizing customers with your brand. The goal is ultimately to capture a prospect’s attention and discuss solutions. You may have how-to video guides, organic social media content, or simple blog posts.
Essentially, this is where the hook lies.
2. Engage
The engagement step is the funnel is when you already have the prospect’s attention, and it’s time to push them toward a product or service.
During this stage, you’re not outright selling something. You’re talking about the category your product lies in as a whole and gently leading them toward the solution that will solve their problem.
3. Convert
Once a customer reaches the third and final stage, they’re ready to make a decision. You’ve already attracted the customer and showcased your solution. Now is the time for outright selling, including highlighting additional benefits and why you’re better than the alternatives.
Tips for Making the Most of Your Inbound Marketing Strategy
What makes an inbound marketing strategy effective? Follow these tips for enhancing your existing strategy and attracting more paying customers:
- Segment – Divide your audience and provide personalized messaging based on the data you have. Personalizing the customer experience is crucial to more targeted selling.
- Build Customer Personas – Personalization relies on understanding your audience more. Build out different customer surveys for the audience you’re targeting so that you can keep your messaging relevant.
- Invest in SEO – Google will match your content to the most relevant audience. SEO is how you expand your brand footprint and ensure that you’re attracting traffic from relevant audiences.
- Build Engaging Content – Great content is often the entryway to your sales funnel. Ensure your content provides immediate value to your target market, such as solving a popular problem. That applies to blogs, videos, social media posts, infographics, and anything else you can come up with.
- Stay Social – Social media is something no business can afford to ignore. Discover where your audience likes to hang out and build a following there with regular content that keeps people hooked.
- Upgrade Your Website – A massive portion of the inbound customer experience occurs on your website. Invest in your UX to ensure that an otherwise ideal customer doesn’t click away because your site is annoying to use.
With these points in mind, any action you take must be A/B tested to determine what works best for your business. Continually optimize and finetune until you get the perfect inbound customer experience.