You are probably wondering how inbound marketing can help you achieve your business goals. This term is not something you’ve heard of before. Let’s look at it again with fresh eyes to create new strategies for the New Year.

According to The Content Marketing Institute 70% of people prefer content over advertising when finding out about a company. Inbound marketing is a great way to generate leads and opportunities for sales.

Too many companies are engaging in inbound marketing. There are too many brands competing, so how can you be competitive? Inbound marketing can help you stand out. Let’s get started!

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound Marketing is a way to help customers interact with your brand, without actually reaching out to them. Customers can find your brand by searching Google for something.

Inbound marketing strategies are a framework that will help you make the right decisions about your inbound marketing plan. These are the elements of an inbound strategy:

• The specific goal of your inbound advertising
• Actions and tactics required to achieve the goal
• Resources needed for the actions and tactics

What tactics can you use to drive traffic to your product page? An inbound marketing strategy will answer this question. All tactics that draw prospects to your brand, regardless of whether they are “on-page”, or “off-page”, can be included under the umbrella of inbound market.

You might be interested in these types of inbound marketing:

•  Content Marketing
•  SEO optimization
•  Email marketing
•  Optimization of the user experience
• Etc.

How to select and implement an inbound marketing strategy

Step 1: Define your target customer persona

First, identify the targeted audience. These criteria should be used to define them.

• Demographic characteristics: Locations, jobs, age, gender
• Interests: Hobbies and pain point

Step 2: Choose the content you want to deliver to your target audience

Different content is required at different stages of your inbound marketing funnel. This could be brand stories, case studies, or an explanation of your product. Your message will be delivered through the content.

Step 3: Choose the channels

Once you’ve identified the content you need to offer customers, you can now choose the delivery method that will best suit your needs.

How to choose the right inbound marketing channel

• Which targeted audiences are there?
• Which format would they prefer?
• What are the opportunities and challenges of these channels?

7+ Inbound Marketing Strategy Ideas

Flywheel is the new method of inbound marketing –

Hubspot will introduce a new term for inbound marketing in 2020: the Flywheel. How does it look?

You can see the three phases of this marketing flywheel. However, there is no end or start. They create the customer journey. The journey will not be complete if any one of these elements is missing.

Marketing funnel for inbound

This divides the journey into three distinct stages that will be handled by each department in your company (support, marketing, and sales).

What happens to this approach?

Problem 1: When you successfully convert one lead to a customer using this approach, you don’t actually do anything to make that customer generate new business leads or business.

Problem 2: Your plan doesn’t place customers at the heart of your business plan

Example: Customers who make a purchase from your brand rarely receive any new information or updates. Once a customer is converted, the relationship between you two ends. 

How can this buying journey be optimized if the inbound marketing flywheel was used in this scenario?

You send the customer useful materials like user guides, tips and retargeting emails. Also, surveys to improve product performance. You send them one per month. This means that you provide value to customers in a way we call customer-centric.

Flywheel allows you to combine the Attract and delight processes. Customers who are offered “additional after sales service” will be more engaged with your brand, and they will spread positive word about it.

This flywheel explains what the Delight process can do. Attract can be powered by the Delight process.

Consumers now search for brand information through multiple channels, including product reviews platforms, social media platforms, word-of-mouth, and other online platforms. A great way to help your brand grow is by attracting positive reviews and comments from customers who have purchased your products.

This new model is a better alternative to the popular funnel. It has the same three stages and main functions.

You might then ask , “Which approach should I take, a funnel, or a flywheel?” 

Our recommendation is to combine the best of both. The old approach is still valid, but the new one takes the best of both. You will have the same funnels, but you will fill them with a bigger flywheel. This approach will optimize your return on investment and help you go far with inbound marketing.

Chatbot that responds to your needs

Google found that 68% of respondents are more likely to purchase from businesses that offer convenient communication.

Inbound marketing is the art and science of helping customers understand your brand’s story. Chatbots are a useful tool in your inbound marketing revolution. It’s a smart, sweet assistant that can help you engage with website visitors and drive business results.

Chatbots can help you make sales, retain customers, and build loyalty.

• Get new leads
• Answer questions
• Introduce a new product
• Inform customers about your product
• Customers’ concerns and problems solved
• Up-sell, cross-sell
• Customers can place orders
• Etc.

Chatbots can provide rich, highly personalized user experiences through conversations if used creatively and appropriately. Here are some things you should do to get chatbots up and running by 2021.

Chatbot strategy with clear goals: Start by looking back at your brand and defining the purpose of chatbots in your business (answer urgent questions, solve confusions or book a call, place order, etc.).

Draw all conversational scripts possible: It is important to work closely with your marketing, customer service, and sales teams in order to gather the most frequently asked questions and most common concerns. All possible paths along the customer journey should be recorded. To make the customer journey memorable and enjoyable, don’t forget about your customers.

Choose a tone for chatbots. You want the chatbot to feel as friendly and human as possible.

Write conversation: Use the selected tone to create conversations that are human-like

Run the chatbot: Test it on your website. Make sure all steps work correctly.

Next, here are some things you should keep in mind while developing chatbots.

• Help customers choose the right categories and departments for segmented conversations

• Show related products to upsell customers who have purchased something from you

• In-product chatbots can be installed to help customers quickly ask questions while they are browsing product pages.

• Instead of asking a single question, offer multiple options for customers instead

• Check that the chat box permits you to upload files

• Maintain a consistent tone throughout all conversations

• Chatbots should not only be used on your website. You also need to “teach” chatbots via social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) in order to communicate with visitors

• Chatbots are available 24/7

• Keep track of all the conversations and their performances

• Optimize your conversations and paths often

Interactive content

Interactions are highly valued, regardless of whether they take place in real life or in business. They facilitate understanding and encourage engagement. Interactive content is becoming more popular in inbound marketing to increase user engagement and make the website stand out.

Interactive content encourages customers to participate in certain activities. Customers may be offered some benefits or enticed into participating in the activity.

Interactive content has many benefits

• Get users to take action. This will increase user engagement. They will naturally consider and understand the product or information you provide by taking the action.

• Gather valuable insights: Customers are selective about giving their information to third parties. They are open to taking short surveys and answering questions. For fun, for rewards, or just for fun. Participating in exciting activities can help you collect valuable information, such as customer preferences, colors, fabrics, and other useful information.

• Customer loyalty is a matter of building trust. The more customers engage, the deeper the loyalty. Customers will become part of your story when you make them a part. They become loyal customers and audiences.

• Revenue boosting is the ultimate goal.

You can use interactive content in any type of complexity, from simple to complex, as soon as you are able:

• Question and Answer in-video: Customers can review their learning or share their opinions on the topics.

• In-blog question: Create a survey to gather opinions from your audience after blogs

• Gamification: Customers can play spin-to win for seasonal coupon codes

• Calculator: This tool allows users to add ingredients to calculate calories for the entire meal.

• Pop-up in-product: Ask customers for their opinions on the product features, or give away a free sample to get your email address

• Solution Finder: Customers can choose the problems or concerns they have and we will guide them to the best solution.

• Use AR and VR technology to allow customers to “try on” products. This will increase customer engagement and create an amazing shopping experience

Don’t make it too complicated if you want to create creative content for your website. To allow customers to express themselves, start with simple blog questions or exit intent popups . Do not forget to place as much emphasis on human interaction as possible.

Increased customer interaction and engagement equals better conversion rates and greater brand awareness. Interactive content is captivating in every way. Make sure you use it well!

Voice-search content

Voice search is important. Here are some projections and statistics:

• It is expected that 50% of voice-activated speakers will be used for shopping by 2022 (MoffettNathanson).

• Voice-based shopping is expected to reach $40 million by 2022, according to TechWyse and ClearBridgeMobile.

• Google Assistant can now translate an entire article and make it loud (Cnet).

It is likely that voice recognition technology producers like Amazon, Google and Apple will be racing to keep up with the pace. Voice assistants are becoming more popular and accurate, so marketers should embrace their importance.

Our advice to a revolution in content and inbound marketing is: Optimize your content in voice search if your customers are using voice search to find your products.

Here’s what you can do.

• Podcasts and videos are essential: Capturing voice-search audiences through podcasts is possible with video and podcasts.

• Focus on local content: Voice search is a particularly popular method of local search. This is an opportunity for brands to concentrate on local SEO

• Find the voice search intent. Ask new questions and provide answers to users’ voice searches.

• Make use of long-tail and conversational keyword phrases to create content that answers users’ questions and educates them about purchasing decisions. To engage users, keep the tone of your article conversational

What’s the future for voice search?

There will be more content to create around.

If you own a cloth shop, consider creating a guideline on “What type of dress to wear to appear slimmer.” If you sell a mattress, consider the topic “What mattress is best for low back pain?”

You will see how valuable creating content is once more. Voice search is faster than typing search and customers will find the information they are looking for.

Video content

After watching the video, at least 80% of consumers purchased software or apps. Video content is in high demand.

These are the benefits of video content to your business:

• Sharing-friendly: Videos will be a valuable resource to feed your social media channels as you move to omnichannel.

• High engagement: The presence of animations and people in the video drives engagement better than text or image

• Convenience: The content is easy to consume by the audience when they aren’t in front of a screen or have limited time to skim through it.

To develop ideas and content for your video marketing, you can follow the stages of the inbound marketing funnel:

• Awareness: Inspirational video, educational video and brand introduction video

• Consideration: FAQs video, explanation video, user guide video, case study video

• Make a personalized video

Marketers need to be familiar with video content. They should add it to their marketing activities as soon as possible. You can include niche content in your video, whether it is short or long.

Highly-personalized emails

Email marketing can be done at any stage of the inbound marketing funnel. You bring the audience closer to making a purchase decision by bringing them through the three stages, namely awareness, engagement and delight.

Personalized emails can be a powerful tool to provide valuable and relevant information to your target audience. Personalized email marketing is an essential part of inbound marketing. It adds value to the customer’s experience.

Personalizing emails can be done at many levels, but these are the most important.

• Subject lines, email avatars, senders

• Email content (dynamic contents), imagery

• Product recommendations include up-sell and Cross-sell, behavior-triggered emails, segmented content, and so on.

How can you successfully guide your audience along the desired path? You need to get inside their heads. How do you get inside their heads? Talk to them or experience the things they are feeling.

Once you have identified the pain points of your customers, you can blend them into your series of emails.

Which emails should you send to your personalized email marketing campaign (in order)

We will briefly mention the main types below to help you quickly determine which emails you can send in your practice.

• Email series welcome: Invite a new member into your community with enthusiasm to share knowledge and solve problems together

• Email series for onboarding: When a new audience joins your community, educate them about their pain points – both found and undiscovered – and the benefits of your solution. (Remind customers that free trials are ending, and urge them to make a purchase immediately with clear benefits).

• Email series after purchase: To further nurture customer relationships (best practices, guidelines, loyalty programme rewards and holiday shopping season deals)

This sequence can be used to create an email marketing system that is comprehensive for your company. This sequence is in line with the inbound marketing flywheel. This email system will help you to increase customer loyalty , retention, and generate sales revenue.

Here are some things you should keep in mind before sending out an email marketing campaign.

• Use the language of the customer instead of technical jargons to communicate with your audience. This will make it easy for them to understand and to engage with you.

• Instead of creating a new email chain, take advantage of existing content and resources.

• To communicate the right message, you need to create segments. You want to make sure that your audience is receiving the best possible communication.

Omnichannel content marketing

This inbound marketing strategy, just like its name, focuses on communicating the right message to multiple audiences, online and offline.

A buyer journey can begin anywhere at the moment. It could start with a mention on Instagram by an influencer, Googling the company’s name or searching for its profile on Facebook. From there, it could go on to purchase one from your website and share the product on Facebook. Consistent messages should be consistent across all channels where customers interact.

These tactics may be a good fit for your business if you believe this strategy is appropriate:

• Social media platforms can be used to build communities: you can easily share your content with a group of likeminded people. This will increase engagement and decrease distractions

• Live broadcast: Use your most-viewed social media pages to broadcast or hold

• Selling on social media platforms: Upload your products to social media markets such as Instagram Shopping and Facebook Shopping

• You should integrate your physical store with your ecommerce shops from the decor, voice of the shop assistants, and character of your services.

• To align your brand spirit with third-party channels, such as marketplaces, take care of your content

• Allow social login and social sharing to connect your website with social networks. You can also insert social media widgets that carry user-generated content.

Omnichannel content marketing allows you to build a network of targeted audiences where you can interact personally with them and engage them. Customers will be more inclined to purchase from a well-known brand than a brand that is less familiar. Be there for your customers.

Improved user experience on your site

It could be a waste to your time and energy to focus on inbound marketing while neglecting website navigation. Inbound marketing is centered around your website. Imagine inviting guests to your home and then creating wonderful experiences for them.

Navigation on the Internet

Let’s manage the customer’s on-site experience when they visit your website to find out more about your products and solutions.

Let’s say you manage to attract visitors’ attention with a series of informative blog posts and ebooks that are distributed all over the internet. A certain number of people are interested in your products and will visit your site to find out if there is something they like. They get lost in a category that is full of unrelated products and can’t filter out the outstanding features. This is a complete disaster.

We all know that it is important to make the discovery process fun and easy.

There are many improvements that you can make to your website in order to improve the customer experience.

• Create a customer-oriented website navigation system: Divide the categories in a way that best suits customer behavior. For higher engagement, prioritize the search and most popular categories.

• Create rich layered navigation to allow customers to quickly filter for their items using features that they are already familiar with

Questions and comments about website 

Inbound marketing is about providing valuable content to the right audience. FAQs and reviews are one of the best tools to build customer trust, increase brand understanding, and encourage buying.

Let’s start with FAQs. If you haven’t updated and developed your FAQs page yet, it is time to do so! These are the reasons your website needs FAQs.

• Engage customers: New customers will have many questions about policies, shipping, payment, and so forth. A casual customer or frequent customer can still have questions about product features.

• You can reuse the content resource FAQs. It embraces interactive information’s characteristics, which are easily consumable and engaging. To drive customers’ attention towards your product, you can reuse valuable content like Tips, How to, and Best practices.

• Increase your SEO rank. Frequently asked questions are helpful and detailed. Search engines love them. Your website will be in good places if you answer the questions.

These images reviews and detailed customer opinions about products will stimulate you to browse the products on this website. For most people, the answer is probably yes.

Product reviews are a powerful tool for your shop because they reflect authenticity and high levels of preference. Customers love to see the product’s appearance and hear from other customers.

Smart, relevant product recommendations

This tactic is still very effective and Amazon is the best example. Your stores can promote auto-related products to their targeted audiences to increase product awareness and, in the best case, to sell.

• Show products that attract customers’ attention, such as best-sellers and new arrivals

• Customers should be reminded of the things they are already interested in, so they don’t forget to search, buy, and browse.

• People like you are often bought together: they can evoke the feeling of belonging or up-sell for a complete set of products

These types of product recommendations should be viewed as a complement to the product. If your customer purchases followers, it would be appropriate to use the “Frequently purchased with” option to allow them to mix and match different types. Another example is when a customer visits your store for the first time. If they are just beginning to understand your products, then “Best sellers” and “New arrivals” will be the best choices.

Are you ready?

Your business will need to continue to use inbound marketing to remain competitive this year and for years to come. Inbound marketing helps you focus on the roots of your products, the value they add to your customers. This marketing strategy allows you to stand out from the crowd without spending a lot on advertising and still achieve long-term sales and customer loyalty.

We hope you find our suggestions helpful and that they give you the confidence to take action and improve your website and marketing efforts.