Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing engages with an audience by connecting them to useful content through organic means, such as optimised search engines, content marketing, social media marketing, brand awarness and sharing links with friends. This more personal approach to marketing has the added advantage of reaching those, who have already taken the first step towards a purchase. Instead of using an outbound approach, inbound marketing provides value to consumers who are already actively searching for information about a product. Inbound marketing  is a better way to market, a better way to sell, and a better way to serve your customers.

Google, being the most used search engine uses an algorithm to rank the websites on the search results page. Inbound marketing uses unique keywords to rank the list. As more people visit a page, the higher its rank goes. Inbound marketing is well-suited for any business that is operated on the Internet and it’s an effective marketing strategy for a wide variety of organizations in multiple fields. Inbound marketing is mostly used by the millennials but that is only because of the freshness, awareness and interactive nature of the internet. An audience which is accustomed to the interactive content of internet will naturally find it more engaging.

Inbound marketing has a more modern approach as opposed to outbound marketing which is accomplished using the more traditional ways such as direct mail, telemarketing, email marketing and conducting events. Inbound marketing is organic, whereas, outbound media deals more with paid media. However, paid or organic, online advertising allows to promote the content online to a target audience unlike outbound marketing as it promotes it’s content regardless of the people interested in their brand which means it’s not targeted. Certainly, inbound marketing provides a better ROI than outbound marketing. Due to outbound marketing being related to traditional marketing it is not responsive and is expensive, compared to inbound marketing. Inbound marketing uses owned and earned media to influence potential customers in creative ways. Owned media are those channels that a business has control over. For example, their website, blog, brand social media profiles and YouTube channel. They choose what to publish, how to publish, and when to publish. Its things such as coverage on news sites often gained through digital PR, which are also mentioned on social media, use of a campaign hashtag, conversations in online forums, and online reviews via Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter. Inbound marketing allows to  track a firm’s performance and improving the approach accordingly, via messaging, type of content, imagery etc. which works best for their target audience and ensures implementing these on a permanent basis, or in their next campaign.