Marketing is a necessity for every business. But what is the most effective form of marketing? What strategies should they follow to boost their engagement? Small businesses and startups tend to find conventional marketing methods too expensive or unwieldy. So, they look for a more interactive and convenient marketing approach that inspires long-term customer relationships. This is where inbound marketing strategies come into play.
Besides, no one likes commercials popping up in the middle of their favorite TV show. Imagine waking up to sales emails from brands you never subscribed to. Super annoying, right?
Today, these mass marketing techniques arenāt as effective as they were earlier. It is now up to the customers to decide what they want to buy, who they want to buy from, and whether they want to be advertised to or not. And to make this work, brands are embracing interactive content in their inbound marketing strategy. Rather than shoving a product in your customersā faces, brands focus on creating valuable and relevant content that answers their questions and solves their problems.
But first, letās understand what inbound marketing is.
What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a strategic approach to creating compelling content that appeals to the needs of the target audience. This marketing strategy uses different forms of pull marketing techniques, including content marketing, blogging, events, search engine optimization, and social media posts to raise brand awareness and attract new businesses. By providing interactive and engaging content on social media instead of using aggressive sales tactics, you can provide great value to your leads and convert them into paying customers.
Letās learn about the various strategies that can help you gain attention and improve your companyās performance without further ado.
Actionable Inbound Marketing Statistics You Should Know
1. Inbound marketing costs $14 less than traditional marketing for each newly acquired customer.
2. The most effective inbound marketing strategy worldwide was content marketing, with a preferred rate of over 20%.
3. 85% of the biggest SaaS businesses own an active blog.
4. The percentage of companies that have a blog and report a positive ROI for inbound marketing is 79%.
5. 88% of video marketers say that video increased their inbound marketing ROI.
6. 24% of inbound marketers stated they will invest more in content marketing in the following years.
Inbound Marketing Strategies You Need to Start Using Today
Attract by Offering Valuable Content
1. Blogging
The āattractā stage involves getting more people to visit your website and turning them into visitors.
In order to attract customers, your business should publish blog content, optimize web pages, and get active on social media. Content plays a major role throughout the inbound marketing strategy, specifically in the first stage of the buyer persona.
What are you doing to help people your audience find your website? How often do you use relevant keywords in your blog posts? Do you use targeted hashtags? If yes, then it will help you rank higher in Google searches and appear in your targeted audienceās social media feed, thus converting strangers into visitors, leads, customers, and promoters.
2. Interactive Content
Interactive Content is a type of content that lets users engage with the content piece. Also, Interactive content types include quizzes, assessments, surveys or forms, recommendations, calculators, and polls.
With the help of interactive content tools, you can create engaging product recommendation quizzes tailored to the needs of your target audience. In addition, it enhances engagement, generates more leads, and helps you discover more about your target audience. The Outgrow platform offers no-code interactive content tools with professional premade layouts and templates that are mobile-friendly and allow you to integrate visual elements.
3. Videos
Your inbound marketing strategy depends heavily on the type and quality of content you create. If you create generic, self-serving videos, youāll never see success. It doesnāt matter how hard you try to promote this content or how well you optimize it for search engines, you will struggle to attract new clients.
Create a library of videos that includes how-to lessons, exclusive interviews, company highlights, testimonials, product demonstrations, and FAQs. It is even possible to feature personalized videos tailored to your target audience. By following these steps in your inbound marketing strategy, you can reach your customers at every step along the buyerās jourpersonaney.
4. Social Media
Engaging with your audience on social media is an essential part of an inbound marketing strategy. You need to have an in-depth knowledge of your market so you can react quickly to your audienceās issues and share valuable content on social media.
Youāre likely to reach your target audience on several social media platforms, regardless of who they are. Create a social media marketing strategy for your business based on the platforms that are relevant to your business and create, share, and promote your content there effectively. Start by creating compelling content in order to understand what your target audience wants and what are their pain points.
5. Free Webinars
Host a free webinar that encourages customers to learn in real-time. It is one of the most effective inbound marketing strategies.
By doing so, your audience or viewers will be able to see your face, get a sense of who you are, and gain a better understanding of your personality. However, sharing guides over emails or uploading them on websites and social media platforms wonāt be helpful. People will download it and never read it.
The webinars, however, allow you to see whether someone watches the whole thing or not. This is a great way to increase your leads as visitors must enter their first name and email address to access the training.
6. Influencer Marketing Campaign
Influencer marketing can work in a variety of ways and for a number of different reasons. Depending on your product category, target audience, and marketing goals, influencer marketing campaigns can be scaled and adjusted for every business.
The first and most important thing you need to do when launching an influencer campaign is to make sure youāre appealing to the right influencers. You can search on Google and find the right influencers according to your niche.
By running influencer marketing campaigns, companies are able to communicate the messages they want, without being too intrusive. It is a free or paid method of getting people interested in your brand if done correctly.
7. Long-tail Keywords and Backlinks
SEO is critical to your startupās success in todayās search-driven marketplace. Backlinks and on-page SEO are important components of an effective inbound marketing strategy. Additionally, including specific long-tail keywords in your content will help you gain more click-through rates than generic keywords.
There is no doubt that backlinks play a significant role in your search engine rankings. In the simplest terms, backlinks are other sites that link to your site. You can get more backlinks to your content in a variety of ways. One such way is by promoting your content to other relevant influencers. Nevertheless, if you prod the right way, you can easily rank higher than massive sites with more authority.
Engage by Providing Relevant Solutions
1. Customer Surveys
The easiest way to know more about your target audience and their pain points is through a survey. If you already have an email list, you can send them a simple form.
To make this work, you only need to ask one question: āWhat is your biggest challenge?ā Additionally, your questions can revolve around your products or services, their requirements, and so on. Your goal is to understand the problems theyāre facing so that you can create compelling and relevant content that targets their deepest interests.
Outgrow helps you create interactive surveys or forms based on your needs in just a few minutes. Hereās a blog for you that lets you learn how to create an engaging survey for your audience.
2. Email Marketing
Email marketing fits perfectly into the second stage of the buyerās journey where customers express interest. They subscribe to email lists or follow social media accounts.
Well-planned email marketing strategies are crucial for providing valuable information with the right content at the right time. It allows you to promote relevant content to your customers, and recommend the most advanced content pieces to those who have opted for email communication.
By running successful email marketing campaigns, you can have a massive ROI. By using email marketing as an inbound marketing strategy, you increase your chances of getting customers to complete the buyerās journey and make a purchase.
3. Conversational Chatbots
Consumers expect and demand a personalized, consumer-driven experience, with services accessible on any device at any time. With that, organizations need software that serves more customers and resolves inadequacies.
Here, conversational AI-powered chatbots solve the purpose. They will help businesses automate processes and improve efficiencies while providing an enriched customer experience and increasing user engagement. It determines which interactions should take place in what contexts, on what channels, and who or what in your organization should be delivering these resolutions.
So, without further delay, create your first-ever conversational chatbot with Outgrow. It makes your communication fun and seamless, and builds your visitorsā persona by analyzing and segmenting chatbot data by demographics, user responses, etc.
4. Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is the key to any successful inbound marketing strategy because it engages buyers at every stage of their buying process. Once you have your leads, your CRM tool will automatically add them to your workflow. In addition, it nurtures leads into customers by providing helpful and relevant content.
For example, automated emails that remind users of their abandoned carts can prompt busy customers to return to your site and complete their purchase.
5. User-generated Content
User-generated content is a breath of fresh air at a time when brands are struggling to overcome ad fatigue and be noticed.
Having a successful user-generated campaign increases brand awareness and builds credibility, making it easier for customers to buy from you. As consumers begin their search journeys in search of authentic and original content, user-generated content affects purchase decisions, thus increasing conversions and driving sales.
6. Email Course
Creating an email course is a simple way to provide extra value to your target audience. You donāt need to take a lot of time to create a video or design element for this type of inbound strategy.
If youāre currently giving away an e-book for your startup and youāve found that it isnāt converting well, try splitting the content into smaller sections. And you can use each section as a separate email. By doing this, you may find that an email course or a masterclass converts even better than an ebook.
Delight by Going the Extra Mile to Build Relationships
1. Smart and Helpful Content
The quality of the content you create is one of the most important components of an inbound marketing strategy.
Smart content is a form of personalized content that most websites use today. It may include age, email address, preferences, needs, social media channels they use, and so on. All this information is then used to customize the content in various ways.
Besides, the content is pulled from a database and integrated into web pages with engaging content that suits the visitor. As a result, a more personalized experience can be created for the reader, resulting in potentially higher conversion rates.
2. Product Recommendation Quizzes/Emails
Now that your target audience has reached the delight stage, you can share some product recommendations with them based on their buyer journey.
In addition to letting people know more about their preferences, you also want to keep them engaged with your interactive quizzes. Those who are willing to share personal information, like their name and email address, are after all your potential customers. After they take the quiz, you can create and refine lead generation lists so that you can contact them via email, offer more quiz options, send newsletters, etc. It may even be possible to turn them into de facto brand evangelists on social media if all goes well!
But thereās something important that might bother you ā how to create quizzes?
Relax! Outgrow is here to help you. With our no-code interactive content tools, you can create engaging and interactive quizzes in just 5 minutes. All you need to do is drag and drop the elements and your quiz is ready.
3. Giveaways and Contests
An Exclusive giveaway can be an excellent marketing promotional tool for your brand as it is an easier and cheaper way to boost brand visibility on social channels.
To create a successful campaign, youāll need to create interactive content to promote the contest. This creates the basis for your inbound marketing strategy. By introducing a giveaway with an integrated registration form that users fill in for a chance to win, you get something very valuable ā targeted leads for your future marketing purposes.
Ready to get started on exclusive giveaways for your next inbound campaign? Letās create exciting giveaways/contests with Outgrow now!
4. Loyalty Programs
While creating inbound marketing strategies for your business, donāt forget to include games, sweepstakes, or polls. Using these programs will enable you to attract clients while providing your followers with fun content to interact with.
Most inbound marketing promotions come with prizes. A random prize draw for all participants can be organized, or discount codes can be offered to all registered users. Additionally, you will strengthen the loyalty and trust of existing clients this way.
5. Personalized Offers
Thereās an even more practical side to giveaways and that is personalized offers. They help brands reconnect with existing customers and increase their market share.
By offering personalized discount codes, 1+1 offers, etc, based on your target audienceās buyer journey, you keep yourself closer to your audience and foster customer relationships.
6. Excellent Customer Support
A successful inbound marketing strategy requires businesses to understand their customersā expectations. All customers expect an unbelievably good customer experience. By offering 24Ć7 support, you are providing a more convenient service for your customers.
Providing round-the-clock support means your service meets customer expectations, and they can reach you at any time. If they are satisfied with the quality of support they receive, they would not switch brands. It will eventually make your customers happy, and they will be loyal to you in the long run.
Now Itās Your Turnā¦
In this blog, weāve discussed all-things-inbound marketing. And it is clearly one of the easiest ways to generate interest in your content in the digital marketing world. So, utilize the tips and tricks we have mentioned above and get started!
Moreover, if you include interactive content in your inbound marketing strategy, you will surely be able to get a hike in your engagement rate. And with a wider reach and improved engagement, your revenues will surely see a significant boost.
So what are you waiting for?
Try out Outgrowās interactive content builder and create the most amazing and engaging content pieces now. Sign up for their free trial.
Tanya Kapoor Tanya is a Content Writer and Marketer at Outgrow. She is self-driven and loves being creative and learning new things. When she is not working, she enjoys watching movies and web series.
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