WebiculesLet’s break this down and try to understand the meaning of inbound marketing in simpler terms. Ever heard of the (in)famous chase game? It goes something like this: whatever that one chases after, it only goes further away from them. It also seems like the law of the nature- one doesn’t always get what they want. Although, if there is a way to attract that ‘whatever’ towards yourself without actively chasing after it, chances of finding that ‘whatever’ chasing after you are much higher. This is the chase game. Now, why am I explaining this here? I am doing so because I am going to draw an analogy here, and consequently liken the outbound and inbound marketing techniques with the aforementioned example.
What is outbound marketing, really? It is the concept of reaching out to your customers and initiating a conversation with them with the hope of talking them into checking your company and its products/services, at the very least. So then, what is inbound marketing? Inbound marketing is the direct opposite of outbound marketing. In it, engaging and relevant content with respect to one’s company is generated and syndicated on different platforms with a target audience in mind. With this, one hopes to generate traffic, direct it to their company’s website, and generate further sales from this point onwards. This way, you are persuading your potential customers to come to you, instead of this process going the other way round with outbound marketing techniques. See, how that worked out? You have your customers where they want to be and that place is of high interest to you, as well.
But, what is the reason behind the huge success rate of inbound marketing? The reason is that once relevant content is put across various social networking sites and when people engage with that content, there stands a massive chance that this content is going to push/attract a stranger to click the link of your website, and thereby, results in converting a stranger into a visitor of your website. This content could also be added for your search engine optimization results and blogging, among other ways. Once you have the visitor on your website, it is important to realize here that this may not be all; in fact this is just the beginning of everything. Creating traffic that will go to your website is great, but this traffic isn’t going to generate any revenue for you. Once you have visitors, you must look to convert these visitors into leads. How does that happen, again? It’s simple. Collect contact information of these visitors and build your database. One of the most utilizable and useful tools to do the same is forms asking for your customers’ contact details when they visit your website. Call-to-action buttons work just as brilliantly. Now that the visitors are converted to leads, it’s time to convert these leads into customers. This is the crux of it all- customers. Your marketing strategy should be calculated enough to pull you through all the way till here. Additionally, it should be strong enough to pull you all the way through to generate revenue for the effective functioning of your company.
An effective marketing scheme or strategy, whether it is inbound or outbound, should not ideally be ever ignored. A marketing technique is an ongoing process. Your customers expect you to be around at all times, and not only when you need them to generate sales for you. As much as they need you for their requirements, you need them just as much for your business. Moreover, customers value companies that look after them. With a proper brand trust built around your business model, more and more customers will come through as customers, since your existing customers would talk among themselves, pass on recommendations, rate your products/services, and eventually be instrumental for your business. So, it is a must to keep your target audience happy by regularly engaging with your visitors, leads, and customers in order to achieve a positive word-of-mouth, while hopefully increasing your current customer base.
