What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing definition
Inbound marketing refers to any marketing activities that bring people in, as opposed to marketers having to reach out to them.
Do you want to learn more about inbound marketing and get the attention of people looking for your business offerings? This post will go through these topics so you can better understand inbound marketing strategies:
- What is inbound marketing?
- Why is inbound marketing important?
- Inbound vs. outbound marketing
- How does inbound marketing work?
- 3 stages of inbound marketing
- 5 inbound marketing strategies (plus examples)
- Limitations of inbound marketing
Let Prospective Clients Come to You
Download our guide to see how you can use inbound marketing tactics to get in front of qualified business looking for your products or services.
Get My Free Guide
What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is a digital marketing strategy that attracts your target audience to your brand, as opposed to your team reaching out to them.
It can also be summed up as any kind of activity that earns attention, as opposed to an activity that pays for it.
Inbound marketing is usually something that was desired by the person consuming it, as opposed to something that was offered or exposed to someone without their permissions or desire for it. This is why you may also sometimes hear inbound marketing called “permission marketing” (a term coined by author Seth Godin).
Businesses can personalize their inbound marketing strategies and use various tactics like content marketing, personalization, and SEO.
Why is inbound marketing important?
Implementing inbound marketing strategies provides various benefits, including boosting your site traffic and establishing your credibility. It can drive your target audience to your site, where you can provide them with helpful information and nurture your relationships with them.
Here are the benefits of inbound marketing:
4 benefits of inbound marketing
Let’s go through each one:
1. It drives traffic to your website
An effective inbound marketing strategy typically involves content marketing and SEO.
Content marketing focuses on creating resources that help your prospects learn about a topic, product, or business. Meanwhile, SEO is a strategy focused on improving your website’s presence in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Together, content marketing and SEO can generate qualified traffic for your website.
2. It establishes your company’s credibility and trustworthiness
Creating useful content that your prospects search for is an important aspect of inbound marketing. By creating content that helps your prospects address their pain points, you establish yourself as:
- A trustworthy resource
- An authority in the industry
- A helpful brand
For example, let’s say you own a forklift dealer business. By publishing a blog post about how to choose the right forklift, you enable your target audience to find your brand when they’re in the early stages of their research.
They’ll perceive your brand as a helpful and credible one, because you’ve provided them with valuable intel on picking the best forklift for their needs.
3. It’s a cost-effective way to build relationships with your audience
Inbound marketing is an economical way to nurture your relationships with your customers. By showing them you understand their needs and are willing to help them with their pain points before, during, and even after their purchase, you’re improving how they view you as a business.
For example, let’s say you own a pest control business. You can nurture your relationships with your existing customers by emailing them useful information about seasonal pests and what they can do to avoid them.
Such an effort shows your customers that you are an expert that provides free, helpful tips for them.
4. It generates qualified leads
Inbound marketing is an effective strategy to generate qualified leads. By creating content that’s targeted at consumers who are looking for your services or relevant information, you’re driving qualified traffic and leads to your website.
If you own a jewelry store business, inbound marketing strategies attract consumers looking for your products or information about the jewelry pieces you offer. On the other hand, traditional marketing strategies may target people who aren’t interested in jewelry at all.
Inbound vs. outbound marketing: What are their differences?
Inbound marketing focuses on creating and sharing content that draws people to your brand. Meanwhile, outbound marketing focuses on reaching out to prospects to generate interest in your brand.
Consumers are learning to tune out outbound marketing methods or are finding ways to avoid them.
For example, when a TV commercial comes on, a consumer may simply change the channel. A spam email may automatically be filtered to the “spam” folder, or deleted without being read.
Those who rely solely on outbound marketing methods are finding that they are not as effective as they once were nor do they provide the desired return on investment (ROI). Inbound marketing, on the other hand, gives marketers a chance to “earn their way in.”
For example, instead of a TV commercial, a jewelry company may produce a detailed guide on caring for jewelry pieces or publishing a blog post. When the consumer needs it, they will find it in a search and become aware of that company. This earns more trust than an intrusive commercial and may also have a higher ROI.
As mentioned, inbound marketing brings people in, as opposed to requiring marketers to reach out. This is the crucial difference between the two.
How does inbound marketing work?
Inbound marketing does not consist of a single marketing method that draws potential customers to your website. In fact, it comprises multiple marketing methods, all of which are considered inbound.
Each of these methods works a little differently. Some of them may rely on producing content that exists for a consumer’s time of need.
Others involve creating a presence on channels like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram. And other methods focus on optimizing your website to make your content and business easier to find on search engines, increasing the likelihood that consumers will find your business and learn more about you.
What are the stages of inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing has three stages to effectively draw your target audience to your business and retain them as customers:
3 stages of inbound marketing
Let’s dive into each stage:
1. Attract
The first stage of inbound marketing is the attract stage. At this stage, your prospects are researching possible solutions for their pain points.
You can draw your audience to your business by publishing helpful content and optimizing your webpages to rank in SERPs.
In the attract phase, your goal is to let your audience know that you understand their needs and you can help them.
2. Engage
The second stage is engage. Once you’ve piqued their interest, your prospect will interact with you.
They might fill out a form to send an inquiry, sign up for a free trial, or purchase your product. At this stage, it’s important to provide value to your prospects and customers so they’ll consider repurchasing from you or building a long-term relationship with your business.
3. Delight
The final stage in inbound marketing is delight, which ensures your customers are satisfied with their purchase. They must also be happy with the after-sales support you give them.
At this stage, focus on keeping your customers satisfied and supported to foster loyalty. You can send out surveys to gather feedback on how you can improve your product or after-sales service to better suit their needs.
5 inbound marketing strategies businesses use
You have choices when it comes to inbound marketing strategies. Companies can personalize their tactics according to their audience, which makes inbound marketing highly customizable.
Five of the most popular strategies include:
5 inbound marketing strategies
Let’s go through each one!
1. Content marketing
Creating articles, how-to pages, whitepapers, or other content is a form of inbound marketing.
These content pieces make it more likely for your audience to find your website when they search online. In addition, it also helps those who know your brand feel an affinity toward you.
If you regularly produce helpful content, your prospects may perceive you as a better, more valuable business than one that does not.
There are various content types you can create. Not every type of content will work for every business, though.
Pro tip
Experiment with your content offerings and content types to see what works best for your business — you might be surprised!
For example, let’s say you’re in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) business for veterinarians. You can publish a blog post about tips on communicating veterinary terms to pet owners.
You can also publish case studies to share how your product has helped veterinary clinics with their operations. Webinars and product guides are also useful content types that you can also experiment with.
2. Social media marketing
Social media marketing is also another component of inbound marketing. While it can be used to reach new customers or potential leads, it can also grow relationships with existing ones by offering helpful content or great service at the right times.
Pro tips
- Repurpose your blog posts or website content into bite-sized social media posts or short videos.
- Create groups on social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.
You can employ a couple of strategies on social media to engage with your audience and nurture your relationships with them.
You can share your website content by sharing the link on social media sites. You can also repurpose your website content into bite-sized social media posts or short videos.
For example, let’s say you own a car dealership. You can create a short-form video about a vehicle you’re promoting and provide a link to your website so that they can visit it when they want to learn more.
Creating groups on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn enables you to interact with your audience and foster an online community. Your group members can ask questions and respond to questions from fellow members.
You can also post announcements and provide support through your groups, which are an excellent avenue to cultivate customer loyalty.
3. Email marketing
Email marketing may not seem like a form of inbound marketing, but because you must get permission before emailing anyone (you do ask for permission, right?) it appears solidly on the inbound list.
Like social media, email is typically used to grow existing relationships by offering something desirable at the right time.
Pro tip
Send out how-to content, links to your blog posts, or highlights from social media. You can even highlight a fan or customer of the week.
You can use email marketing as part of your inbound marketing strategies by offering more than just sales or deals in your emails.
4. Personalization
Every day, your prospect receives a lot of marketing messages. To stand out among your competitors, you must provide them with personalized, relevant information.
Fun fact: 72% of customers say they only engage with personalized marketing. That said, it’s more important than ever to implement personalization strategies to get noticed by your prospects and stand out among your competitors.
You can implement personalization strategies on your website. For example, let’s say you’re a pet store owner with multiple brick-and-mortar locations in different cities.
People who visit your site from a particular city will see a website that’s tailored to their location. They can view the products and services that are available at your nearby store.
Pro tip
To effectively personalize your audience’s experience, make sure you know your audience well, including their interests or needs.
In our pet store owner example earlier, you can implement a personalized email marketing campaign by sending only the relevant products and information to each customer segment.
For example, you can segregate your customers according to their pets, their pets’ age, and needs. A newsletter campaign for senior dog owners can share tips on senior dog nutrition and provide special offers on related products.
Meanwhile, pet guardians who own kittens don’t get the same newsletters. Instead, they receive information on products for kittens and kitten-proofing their homes.
5. SEO
Yes, SEO is a crucial part of inbound marketing. After all, where would your other inbound marketing strategies get you if they weren’t properly optimized or your audience can’t find you online?
If you’re not already familiar with SEO, it’s an important part of online marketing in which your website is optimized to rank in search results for relevant searches. SEO is the difference between ranking #1 and ranking #10, and determines which websites take the top spots for any specific search query.
Without SEO, which ensures your content is as search engine-friendly as possible, even your best content would have no chance of reaching your target audience.
Pro tip
Implement white-hat SEO strategies to outrank your competitors and provide value to your audience.
For example, let’s say you’re in the business of heavy equipment rental. You can perform an SEO audit of your website using our SEO Checker to identify optimization opportunities.
Then, you can start with keyword research to unearth search terms that your audience uses when searching for your offerings or competitors. Other SEO strategies include the following:
- Create helpful content exhibiting experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).
- Implement a link-building strategy.
- Employ technical SEO best practices.
- Provide an excellent user experience on your website.
- Review and re-optimize your content.
Limitations of inbound marketing
While inbound marketing offers many benefits, it has limitations, too:
- It takes time: You won’t get instant results like increased sales with inbound marketing. This strategy typically takes time to show results because it involves creating content, fostering trust, and engaging with your prospects.
- It requires effort: Inbound marketing is an ongoing strategy. It involves creating new helpful content for your prospects and repurposing content to reach new audiences. Then, you need to analyze your content marketing efforts’ performance to identify new opportunities.
- It needs advanced analytics to measure its ROI: Attributing new leads and sales to your inbound marketing efforts requires advanced analytics platforms. Thankfully, tools like MarketingCloudFX enable you to measure your inbound marketing efforts, attribute leads, and inform your strategy with data and insights!
Our digital marketing campaigns impact the metrics that improve your bottom line.
See Our Approach
$10 billion
24 million
7.14 million
Need help developing an inbound marketing strategy?
As a leading full-service digital marketing agency, WebFX can create a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy for your business. While other firms may simply provide a few services and call it a day, we at WebFX develop personalized, strategic plans designed to create the greatest ROI possible.
Our team of 500+ marketing experts is excited to learn more about your business and goals, and craft an inbound marketing strategy that will drive revenue for your business.
When you’re ready to experience award-winning web design, SEO, and inbound marketing from one of the nation’s best marketing teams, we’d love to hear from you.
Contact us online or call us at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our inbound marketing services!