In today's digital age, millions of brands are competing for the attention of customers on different channels. With such intense competition, there is hardly any scope for widening your arms and you need to ensure that your potential customers find your brand at the right time and place. This is where inbound marketing can come to your rescue.
According to research:
Inbound marketing generates three times more leads per dollar when compared to traditional marketing methods.
82 percent of marketers who blog see a positive return on investment from their inbound marketing initiatives.
54 percent of inbound users allocate approximately 25-49 percent of their marketing budget to inbound marketing initiatives.
What is inbound marketing?
Inbound Marketing can be described as a business methodology in which valuable experiences and content are tailored to attract customers. It forms connections customers are looking for and provides solutions to problems they are facing, unlike outbound marketing which tends to interrupt your audience with content they don't always want.
In other words, inbound marketing is all about encouraging customers to come to you by offering them something of real and genuine value. In the early stages of the customer journey, it usually pertains to high-quality content in the form of blogs, whitepapers, DIY videos, and webinars that answer your customers' questions, address their pain points, or simply educate, interest them, or entertain them.
Once your brand is able to attract the attention of potential customers, the next step is to engage them and continue offering relevant insights, solutions, and assets that nurture them along their buying journey. In the final stage, your brand needs to delight your customers so you can transform them into loyal customers and advocates for your brand.
Let's have a close look at each of these different phases.
Attract
The most crucial aspect of the 'attract' stage of the inbound marketing process is to devise an effective content strategy to attract customers and drive brand awareness.
Here are some interesting inbound marketing statistics:
80 percent of people appreciate learning about a brand through custom content
70 percent of people prefer learning about a brand through articles instead of advertisements
68 percent of people spend time reading about brands that are of interest to them
60 percent of people feel inspired to buy a product after reading about it
To attract customers, brands should research and write blog posts that answer the questions of customers, solve their pain points and challenges, reflect the top priorities of customers, and show the brand's ability to meet customer needs.
Publishing eBooks or guides should also be made a priority to showcase your knowledge, expertise, and strengths is also a good idea. Producing engaging, relevant, unique, and high-quality video content is also an excellent choice to capture the attention of people and encourage sharing. You can also post content and social media updates to drive traffic to your website.
Engage
The biggest challenge for a brand is to find innovative ways consistently on to how it should engage with the earned leads and nurture them along their buying journey. For this, you can qualify and segment leads and use automation to improve efficiency.
You can also personalize messaging for maximum impact and include engaging calls-to-action to encourage the next steps and conversion. It is highly recommended that you should deliver specific, focused content in the form of case studies, webinars, and customer reviews during the 'engage' stage of the customer journey.
Delight
A brand should not only focus on winning new customers, but also on retaining existing customers. After all, the cost of acquiring a new customer is five times more than retaining a customer.
To delight your customers throughout their buying journey, you can try out customer satisfaction surveys to identify your strengths and (more importantly) weaknesses. This will help you make positive changes proactively and better serve your customers. You can also leverage chatbots to offer instant answers to frequently asked questions of your customers. Furthermore, you can always count on social listening to gauge customer sentiment and identify opportunities to strengthen your existing customer relationships, and deliver responsive, efficient customer service.
Discover how Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM can help you harness the potential of inbound marketing and put you on the right track to sustainable success. Call or email us at C.I.G Consultants now!