Attract. Don't chase - The Inbound Methodology.​

Inbound marketing equates to customer-focused marketing and involves aligning your marketing and sales efforts according to how your customers buy. This is why it is also known as buyer-centric marketing or permission-based marketing.

The way customers make purchases have changed, with a huge amount of information on the internet and easy access to a huge social network, customers have now become your brand advocates and influencers. No more do they rely on your sales team to sell them products and services.

The power of converting now lies more with the customers than with your sales team. Customers now have better access to responsive technology than ever before, giving them the power to choose the type of marketing and messages they receive. This shift in control has forced modern marketers to evolve their marketing strategies.

If you’re a business owner looking to see a return on investment from your marketing efforts, you must put the customers’ needs first and the inbound methodology will help you get there.

Inbound marketing starts with learning everything there is to know about your potential customer – what they want, what they don’t want, what are their pains and frustrations. Once you have gathered this information you then begin to create a plan on how you can market your services and products in a way that would help them solve their pain points. You will need to focus on addressing their issues while engaging them and building a relationship of long-lasting trust.

Research has shown that buyers are already halfway through the buying process before they are ready to talk with a salesperson.

Let’s break down the Inbound Marketing methodology for you, so you can implement these learnings in improving your marketing strategy and ultimately make more sales.

The Inbound Marketing Methodology is:

Inbound Marketing Methodology is:

• Taking time to understand your customer
• Creating content that helps you get found by people likely to buy from you.
• Converting those prospects who find you into leads.
• Nurturing your leads until they are ready to buy.
• Delight your customers and keep them coming back for more

Understanding your customer:

Understanding your customers is the key to giving them better services. Inbound marketing is about your customers, not you, your business, your brand values, or what you are offering. It’s about your customers and what they want.

And in order to find this out, you need to take time to understand who your customers are.

You can do this by creating a buyer persona.By gaining detailed information about people who are likely to buy from you. Asking questions, such as what’s important to your buyers at each stage of the buying process and what information and experience they are looking for can help you create a buyer persona.

Getting Found:

When it comes to marketing strategies, you don’t want to focus your marketing efforts or investment on a bunch of random people who aren’t interested in what you’re saying. You want to identify people who are looking for your product and service and create content that attracts them to you.

Once you’ve understood what your customers want at each stage of the buying process and what information and experience they are looking for, you will be able to draft a plan that will cater to those needs. keyword analysis, SEO, blog articles, PR, social media, and video marketing are great tactics to use at this stage.

Converting Customer:

After attracting potential leads, your focus should now be to offer this group of leads information they will find helpful and educational during the buying process. Your website will play an important role here. When customers visit your website, they want to know what you’re offering without having to look for it and they want to know it fast.

Apart from having an easy-to-navigate website, greeting them with “gated content” is a great way of doing this. Offer your website visitors insightful information or valuable content in exchange for their email or phone number. Use Clever CTAs, email marketing, and video content or webinars to push these users to take the next step.

Closing sales:

Now that you’ve got your lead right where you want them, converting them into customers is an important but difficult step. By this time your users are already halfway through the buying process, and they have already studied competitors and are fully educated about what they want.

With a well-defined user persona, you’ll know exactly what your customers want and what you need to offer. At this stage, your content has to be strategic, relevant, timely, and helpful to where they are in the buying process.

Additionally, a callback widget on your website will help your customers get in touch with you at the time of their convenience. Offering your customers immediate human connection to help them make a purchase decision or solve their doubts is a great way to get them to convert and move further through the purchasing process.

Delighting:

The inbound methodology doesn’t just end with closing a sale or converting a lead into a customer. Remember, a delighted and fully satisfied customer is your best salesman. You want to ensure everyone who engages with your brand has a pleasant interaction, even the ones that don’t convert.

Offering helpful information, tips, great after-sale supports is not an option but a must. You can do this by treating your customers as peoples and not income generators. Creating personalized content for them and engaging with your customers over social media is one way of doing this.

Remember your potential customers have access to an endless stream of information on the internet, giving them the opportunity to be selective about how much and what type of information they receive. And this is exactly why inbound marketing is so effective.

Inbound marketing is a tactic that helps you create useful content that cuts through the noise and delivers effective solutions to your buyer’s needs. With inbound marketing, you can stand out from the crowd, attract people to your business naturally, and connect directly with your buyers to influence a purchase.

If you need help generating inbound leads, try Callspree. A call back widget you can easily add to your website and turn website traffic into customers. Read our blog on ‘How Callspree can help convert website visitors into customers‘ to know more about how this will help you increase conversions.