What is Inbound Marketing?
Doing Inbound Marketing Right
Inbound marketing is different than traditional marketing, which uses bigger, bolder, more controversial ads than your competition to help you stick out from the crowd. It doesn’t take much and the average consumer feels that they’re being yelled at from all sides by thousands of companies to buy from them. As a result, our brains learn to subconsciously filter out all that advertising noise. The result for the corporations is that they spend more and more money to get louder and louder, but their sales flatline or go down. It’s a frustrating situation for both sides.
Instead of beating your potential customers with a stick, lure them in with honey! The idea behind inbound marketing is to have your potential customers look for you and come to you. Additionally, they’re approaching you in a relaxed manner as they feel they know and trust you. They simply can’t wait to buy from you! Not only does this sound wonderful, but it’s a very possible reality.
How Does Inbound Marketing Work?
Provide Customer Value
The way to do inbound marketing properly is to engage with your audience in a fun and friendly manner without trying to sell them anything. In fact, you want to give them stuff for free. No, you’re not giving away free products or services necessarily. Instead, you may provide them with your expertise.
For example, you may give away white papers, top 10 lists, checklists, videos, templates, informational brochures, etc. All of these items which are given away must not be done so with the intention of selling. These are to be items of value that your audience appreciates and wants to share.
The magic in how to turn your audience into paying customers by using inbound marketing is in how the strategy is put together. Each engagement leads to the next one, which in turn collects additional data about your audience. It’s all about building relationships and growing trust.