Highlighting the Benefits of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing has existed for a while, but many businesses are still getting used to or adopting it. Its concept – letting customers bring themselves to you – feels a lot simpler than its execution. But as more people go out of their way or have the tools to avoid traditional outbound ads, or are simply overwhelmed by the volume they face, inbound marketing circumvents that. 

In this post, we’ll highlight the benefits inbound marketing offers, and offer tips to implement this strategy. 

Inbound Marketing's Benefits

Instead of inundating your prospective customers with an endless array of ads, inbound marketing gives them a litany of resources to reach their own conclusions. While traditional ads will always be an important factor, it offers a balance to your business’s marketing strategy.  

The key tools of inbound marketing include: 

• Content Marketing – Create blog posts or videos to share information or entertain customers, helping them learn about your brand as they learn about your industry.

• SEO – Make sure your site shows up in searches by optimizing your content for keywords that help align what you offer with what customers want to know.

• Social Media Engagement – Engage with customers around new offerings or industry insights, while gaining new followers or generating more leads.

• Email Marketing – Communicate and provide useful content directly to customers through email marketing by sharing exclusive information or alerting them to short-term deals.

Creating name recognition through display and audio ads can attract customers, who then find the resources of your inbound strategy. It makes all sides of your business stronger, establishing your trust and credibility, nurturing leads until they’re ready to purchase, and fostering long-standing customer relationships. 

Let’s dive into some of the specific benefits inbound marketing brings. 

Generates Quality Leads

Inbound marketing attracts the right audience for what you offer by reaching the customers who are searching for and trying to learn about the services you provide. Because inbound lets customers find you themselves, they’re more likely to need something your company offers – either now or shortly in the future.  

Inbound generates better leads because it attracts customers who are trying to learn and are ready to buy. You can reach them more effectively by choosing and optimizing for keywords that fit those intentions. When developing your keyword list, you can specify whether customers search these for informational or commercial intent. Then, you can use it to segment the goals of your content, where informational intent words can become blog or video posts, where commercial intent can become SEM or give insight for email marketing. 

Builds Trust and Credibility

At the heart of inbound marketing is an effort to help customers help themselves become more educated. That empowers them to make more informed decisions, but inbound marketing also builds trust and establishes your credibility. It’s another pathway to offer customer support by either providing answers to any questions they may have or offering advice on how to use your products or services most effectively. 

Whether you’re in a specific industry or put a twist on classic offerings, inbound marketing gives you a platform to explain what that means to customers. In doing so and helping customers, it builds your credibility by giving customers resources with no strings attached. 

Cost-Effectively Reaches Customers 

Due to its investment in creating value, inbound marketing brings customers to your company organically. You can be more confident that the people who find your brand and content are interested in what you offer – and you can avoid the costs associated with finding them.  

It’s still important to know who your audience is (and as you attract leads through inbound, you’ll learn a lot more about them). However, the effort and cost associated with matching ads to timeslots and specific websites or streaming services get offset by drawing people to you through search engines. 

Enhances Your Other Marketing Efforts 

Taking strategies from inbound and outbound marketing helps you get your marketing to go further. While inbound improves brand awareness and credibility, launching display, audio, or video ads alongside of it can increase awareness further. Tying your efforts together gives customers resources to browse once they’re on your site.  

That makes inbound marketing an exceptional partner to your omnichannel marketing efforts. Enhanced trust and credibility improve how customers react to your other marketing, like display and SEM ads, as they’ll be more willing to click into something they recognize is legitimate.  

As you build your inbound presence, it will improve recognition and conversion rates for ads across all platforms. 

Embrace Inbound Marketing to Grow Your Business 

After a decade and a half, inbound marketing has become a critical portion of marketing toolsets. It allows businesses to attract the customers most likely to benefit and be interested in what your business offers. As more business functions make their way online, it also gives you a path to making your website more attractive. 

As early adopters of the inbound methodology, we’ve developed the expertise to help your company develop a successful inbound marketing strategy. We learned what works by developing the strategy for ourselves. 

Reach out today to learn more about how we can help your customers learn more about your industry and grow your company!