The Myth – Usually people think that Content Marketing and Inbound Marketing are the same.  While content marketing is about the creation of content, appropriate dissemination across channels and its right potential reach. Nevertheless, inbound marketing may look similar but it is not, relatively speaking.

The Reality – In a way, inbound marketing and content marketing may appear to be similar. Basically, content marketing is something where brands create a relationship with customers by eloquent and absorbing content. We must understand that inbound marketing with its entire perspective is more than what meets the eye.  Its primary activity is to act as a tool to inspire a visitor to take an action.

Inbound Marketing

Let us see what inbound marketing actually entails. The main scope of work of inbound marketing is to give your brand a jump-start with the relevant content.  With inbound marketing, your prospective customer finds your business easily through various channels. These different channels are search engines, blogs, social media or through direct search.  Mind you, it is the content that adds value by using its charm, aka web-presence helps your business grow which is a critical need for all organizations. Inbound Marketing adopts the following avenues: helps your business growl organizations.

SEO

Let us face it there is no point of creating content if it cannot be found by the right people at the right time.  In order to reach the eyes of potential customers, search engine optimization companies scientifically try to rank on Page 1. In modern commerce, it has become important to rank within the top 3 results as it takes away the maximum clicks which are approximately 21%.

Blogging

It should be understood first that blogging not only helps in getting more visitors to the website but also possess the ability to increase your lead count. Believe you me, certainly, there will be a more dramatic impact on your company’s overall inbound marketing performance if your blogs are strategically aligned with your sales process and you have incorporated a comprehensive content strategy to create blogs. Moreover, blogging needs to be goal-centric. You are creating blogs with profitability in mind and not without any purpose. Each successive blog must reach more people, drive additional traffic and you will eventually see a significant rise in your revenue.

Website Design

A truly active inbound website does not indulge in conversation about the business. On the contrary, it expresses the challenges and the goals of visitors.  With this, we must understand that it is integral to convey the fact that you are well prepared to assist the visitors and solve their problems or provide guidance for them to resolve on their own. This added service will make the visitor trust you enough to convert into a lead.

Landing Pages

A Landing Page in an Inbound Marketing strategy is one of the essential elements because it tends to eliminate all distractions.  The main advantage is by having very limited external links or product information on them to grip the customers’ attention to the information you want them to receive. Moreover, a visitor is much more likely to sign up for a newsletter; and this is the only message on the landing page, which makes them sit up and think! The message that you wish to convey may likely to get lost if it is buried in product descriptions, blogs, or website pages. Giving visitors a clear call to action and then to repeat it in a standalone landing page to increase conversions is the ideal way to go about!

Content Offers

Inbound Marketing content is clearly different from content on traditional websites in one key way. Each piece of content is designed for a particular buyer persona in a specific point of his/her buyer’s journey. Care should be taken to compose content for different people in the marketing funnel and not just for those willing to buy today. In other words, your prospects’ buying process is quite important even while creating content! This content may be in the form of e-books, white papers, product videos or even webinars.

Marketing Automation

Sales representatives will always remain indispensable in any sales process as Inbound Marketing does not close deals. There should be a system in place to keep your sales funnel crowded with leads in Inbound Marketing. With proper marketing automation, we can make inbound a part of a well-oiled sales machine.

Marketing Automation takes inbound leads and moves them further down the tunnel with lead nurturing and your sales team. It is analytical, contextual and precise that allows your customers to feel that they are given importance by interacting with your business on a one-on-one basis.

Moreover, an inbound website is a powerful tool that adapts to a prospective customer. Being a dynamic entity, it can be easily be used to adaptor understand the visitor experience.

Smart content is one golden ticket to keep leads returning to your site. It works by queuing up different bits of messaging based on lead information you have gathered.  In fact, targeted messaging works wonders for converting leads.

Social Media Marketing

One of the brilliant ways to attract new or past visitors is via the social media platform which is becoming the one-stop destination for all information. Ultimately, creating brilliant content is really just the beginning of our journey. A plan on how to promote your content is the real deal we are looking for.

A marketing plan should entail paid, owned and earned social media approaches that will finally achieve business goals. Though not limited to, but would include using your own social media channels, paying for social media advertisements and nurturing social media relationships with other users.

To be successful with inbound marketing on Social Media all you need is to create and share valuable or relevant content that is interesting to your prospective customers. By doing so, it allows the audience to trust you to be a thought leader or influencer!

Analytics

As a final point, the most powerful characteristic of inbound marketing is that all decisions are based on customized and comprehensive data. Your content marketing strategy, social media plans, website design, and landing pages can all furnish data to help businesses make informed decisions.

Using these parameters to make decisions guides you to customize each decision to your buyer persona.

Email Marketing

Is Email Marketing Inbound or Outbound?  It can be a remarkable tool to keep your leads engaged with the company. Since email marketing is available comparatively at a low cost but with a high RoI and its increased capability of upgrading & automation. In conclusion, it is one of the most effective tactics in an inbound marketing kit!