Inbound marketing

In addition to classic e-mail marketing, ad­ver­tis­ing on search engines (SEA) and social networks, inbound marketing counts as one of the most sought-after and effective ways for boosting your company’s success online. In this guide, you’ll find out exactly what is behind this marketing concept and what kind of dis­ci­plines you should master for a suc­cess­ful inbound campaign.

Winning over new customers has never been easier thanks to global net­work­ing. The web has become the central com­mu­ni­ca­tion and in­for­ma­tion platform and is a great basis for at­tract­ing users to your web project. Ad­ver­tise­ments can now not only be displayed in the search engine results, but also directly on social media networks – perfectly matched to the target group. However, even if the costs are low compared to ad­ver­tis­ing on tele­vi­sion and in print, the strong com­pe­ti­tion within the market means that classic online marketing strate­gies are seemingly hopeless for new companies. Only fi­nan­cial­ly-stable companies can handle the financial costs of extensive campaigns relating to search engines, social media, and e-mails. The cost-effective and in­no­v­a­tive al­ter­na­tive for startups and smaller companies: inbound marketing. This marketing concept, unlike tra­di­tion­al ap­proach­es, is not based on ad­dress­ing customers directly. New customers are not generated by simply pushing a flyer into their hand, or by them listening to an ad­ver­tise­ment on the radio, or by print ad­ver­tise­ment, which aims to get them in­ter­est­ed in your company. Inbound marketing is based on the idea that users, who are looking for a specific product, find their own way to your website and become new customers of their own accord. As an inbound marketer, there are some things you can do to help, otherwise lead gen­er­a­tion (turning users into potential customers) would just be left to chance. The main aim of inbound marketing is to offer value to users by providing in­for­ma­tive content, topics, or solutions to problems. After lead gen­er­a­tion, inbound marketing aims to convert the leads into actual customers, to retain them in the long run, and turn them into sup­port­ers of your brand.

Inbound marketing is by no means a short-term marketing plan to lead visitors to your website – an important word in this context is relevance. By creating content that consumers notice and ap­pre­ci­ate, you will succeed with this marketing strategy by reaching the target group and building a positive image of the company. If your product portfolio matches your content, then it’s likely that users will find your products and services by looking at your content, since they have already shown interest. The more useful your content is for the site visitor and the more it has to do with your offers, the higher the chance is of winning over high-quality users, leads, and customers.

The following sections explain the most important stages that need to be mastered to turn a visitor into a customer or even into a fan of your company.

The basic task of an inbound marketer is to generate traffic for their own website. In this context, you would think about search engine op­ti­miza­tion – and how important it is to improve the rankings for an inbound campaign. Your content strategy is of top priority because with the help of in­for­ma­tive and high-quality content, you can attract your target group since they have the highest prob­a­bil­i­ty of becoming customers. One of the most effective inbound marketing tools is blogging, since a blog can be easily in­te­grat­ed into your existing web project. Once a user has read some blog posts, they aren’t far away from your products.

In addition, it’s rec­om­mend­ed to use platforms relevant to your target group, such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, or Snapchat. Strong content also does well here; videos and in­fo­graph­ics are es­pe­cial­ly popular with social media users. You can connect with your customers through these channels and share the latest news about your company. On your company’s website, you can also offer podcasts, webinars, e-books, or white papers. The afore­men­tioned search engine op­ti­miza­tion enables you to make the best of all the measures, by in­te­grat­ing pre­vi­ous­ly re­searched keywords into the ap­pro­pri­ate context and adding relevant links to your content. For more in­for­ma­tion on targeted content design, please refer to our guide on content marketing.

If you have managed to impress visitors with your website, you have to reap the benefits of your work. A high volume of traffic is a good sign for your project and also relevant for the search engine ranking, but it isn’t a guarantee that you will get the desired con­ver­sions and sell products, gain sub­scribers, or have users download from you. The next step is to turn visitors into leads by getting their contact in­for­ma­tion – es­pe­cial­ly their e-mail address. If you don’t do this, you run the risk of visitors leaving your site and then you have no way of getting in touch with them. The trick is to provide great content to impress the user, so that they gladly leave their in­for­ma­tion.

The easiest way to achieve this is to link the dis­clos­ing of contact in­for­ma­tion with access to exclusive content. If, for example, the prospec­tive buyer wants to download your e-book or take part in a webinar, ask them to enter their e-mail address. Another idea is to allow access to ad­di­tion­al features on your web project once a user has shared their contact in­for­ma­tion. It’s crucial that you have well-placed call-to-actions, such as 'I would like to par­tic­i­pate in the webinar' on your website. Clear buttons or links should lead all users, who have followed the call-to-action, to a specially-prepared landing page con­tain­ing all necessary in­for­ma­tion and the contact form. It is important to strength­en users’ interest and make the contact form as easy as possible to complete.

Col­lect­ing visitors' contact in­for­ma­tion is a valuable asset, but as an inbound marketer you need to know how to use this data to your advantage. You should first collect the converted leads in a central database. This way, you can track in­di­vid­ual users or certain user groups during customer ac­qui­si­tion and later customer re­la­tion­ship man­age­ment. We also recommend lead scoring – the qual­i­ta­tive clas­si­fi­ca­tion of your leads. In par­tic­u­lar, it is important to check how up-to-date and complete the user profile is. At the same time, it makes sense to calculate the buyer’s potential. Analyzing potential new customers serves as a basis for sub­se­quent­ly con­tact­ing them. The more you customize, the higher your chances of success: per­son­al­ized e-mails are a tried and tested method, but when the plan is to gain leads via Twitter, for example, it’s more effective to focus on the short message service. Stay as relevant as possible to your prospec­tive customers and you will see that this effort pays off in the long run, rec­og­niz­able in an increase in trust and sales figures. Evaluate the cases in which lead-customer con­ver­sions are doing par­tic­u­lar­ly well, or not as well, so that you can steadily improve the process.

If there’s suf­fi­cient content, it’s optimized for search engines, the traffic is con­tin­u­ous­ly growing, and enough leads and customers are being generated, you can count your inbound marketing campaign as a success. However, this doesn’t mean you can sit back and relax: Gaining new customers is important for your company’s growth, but it is much more important to keep these customers as long as possible. On one hand, it is easier to convince existing customers to make future purchases than to start from scratch with a new customer. On the other hand, inbound marketing also aims to encourage satisfied customers to do your ad­ver­tis­ing for you, by sharing your content or rec­om­mend­ing products.

To maintain a re­la­tion­ship with your customers, you should always keep in contact with them. Newslet­ters are just as useful as blog posts or social network posts. After the initial phase, make sure that content is high-quality and tailored to your users, since your inbound campaign will be less suc­cess­ful if the quality decreases. The various com­mu­ni­ca­tion channels are the first point of contact nowadays when customers have problems. Spe­cial­ized staff are needed to run the profiles and answer any queries so that customers feel at ease and taken care of.

Various ad­ver­tis­ing campaigns in the recent past have im­pres­sive­ly demon­strat­ed that inbound marketing works:

• Coca Cola: in 2011, the beverage man­u­fac­tur­er released new labels on its bottles in Australia, declaring 'Share a Coke with…' followed by one of around 250 popular names. The idea got off to a good start, increased sales figures and profits, and quickly made its way onto social media, where customers shared photos of their bottles, and later, cans. This campaign not only won back the attention of existing customers, but also generated a lot of new leads: In addition to the names editions that were available in stores, it was also possible to order cus­tomized versions from the website and send them to friends or family. On top of the delivery address, buyers are required to enter a valid e-mail address. This is how the beverage man­u­fac­tur­er collected new contacts for their database.
• Dove: many companies use com­pe­ti­tions as a way of gen­er­at­ing leads. For example, Dove, the personal care brand, ran a contest called 'Real Beauty Should Be Shared' where fans had to explain why their friend rep­re­sents real beauty. It was a very suc­cess­ful campaign, and was in line with Dove’s idea of ‘real people’ and sharing. The prize was to become the next face of Dove.
• Macy’s: the de­part­ment store was founded over 150 years ago and now boasts over 800 stores in 45 states. A recent com­pe­ti­tion, named 'Frank Sepe Sweeps', promoted their fitness wear as well as provided weekly fitness tips. All people had to do to enter was to 'like' the page and allow Facebook access. The winner received a $1,000 gift card for a new fitness wardrobe from the store.

Inbound marketing has the rep­u­ta­tion of being a par­tic­u­lar­ly cost-effective form of modern online marketing. However, you shouldn’t un­der­es­ti­mate the necessary costs and, above all, the effort involved when you consider its sub dis­ci­plines: content marketing, newslet­ter marketing, search engine op­ti­miza­tion, and customer re­la­tion­ship man­age­ment (CRM). Par­tic­u­lar­ly at the beginning, im­ple­ment­ing high-quality content, which is perfectly matched to the users’ interests, requires a lot of patience and a certain budget. Even with the pro­gres­sive duration of the campaign, main­tain­ing content is very important – in addition, there’s also the effort involved in con­vert­ing leads into customers – and the customer care later on.

However, inbound marketing offers a very good lead-customer con­ver­sion rate since it generates leads, which result in increased buyer potential. Target group-specific content and user-friendly, well-placed contact forms, linked to mean­ing­ful call-to-actions, form the basis to this.