Why You Need Inbound Marketing

You might already know that organic traffic is important in your marketing strategy, but perhaps you didn't know how important.

DID YOU KNOW THAT 94% OF THE LINKS CONSUMERS CLICK ON ARE ORGANIC, NOT PAID?

It's wise to use both organic and paid marketing methods, but the reality is, most businesses tend to focus on one or the other. If you're guilty of focusing on paid, then you need to read on.

In this article, we'll discuss why an inbound marketing strategy that drives organic traffic is vital to the success of your business.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

As the name suggests, the inbound marketing methodology is designed to pull or attract your best customers to you. This is as opposed to outbound marketing, in which you market to and interrupt prospects through paid methods such as direct mail, newspapers, broadcast media, ads, etc.

Inbound marketing examples include blogs, social media campaigns, webinars, eBooks, whitepapers, podcasts, video series, and search engine optimization (SEO) for your website. Typically, inbound marketing content is persona-based and is designed to attract more customers like the ones you already have.

The Benefits of Inbound Marketing

Now that you know what inbound marketing is, we can move on to its benefits. 

Inbound Marketing is Cost-Effective

As a business owner, marketer or sales executive who needs leads for your sales team, you may be concerned about how much money you have to spend on marketing and the ROI you are likely to get. As you may already know from some of the outbound marketing methods you use, campaigns can quickly eat away at your budget. With outbound marketing, when you run out of budget, your marketing stops and so, too, do your efforts.

With inbound marketing, there is an initial cost to build content, but then those assets can be used over and over to find and convert leads, manage and nurture prospects, and delight customers. A one-time investment for a relevant blog or eBook, for example, that is posted on your website continues to work for you beyond your initial investment. With inbound marketing, you create content that keeps delivering results.

Get More Qualified Leads

One of the main advantages of inbound marketing is your campaigns can be very targeted. This is unlike outbound marketing, in which you're casting a wide net to a sea of consumers. Your net may get you the customers you've desired, but a caveat is they come with a bunch of unqualified leads that you will have to toss overboard.

Inbound marketing gives you more opportunities by allowing you to focus on prospects who are more like your best customers. As an example, when you write content your personas care about, they get educated, and you get more qualified leads. Users who end up in your funnel through inbound marketing are usually more interested in your products or services. This means higher ROI and fewer of your marketing dollars going to waste.

Your Marketing Campaigns Are Always On

An issue with outbound marketing is you usually run campaigns over a limited period of time. For example, if you've bought ads, your agency will run them for a set amount of time. If you want to continue with paid strategies, you'll have to keep pouring money into them.

Inbound marketing relies heavily on content marketing, which means the time you spend creating that content will be well worth it. For instance, let's say you've written a persona-based blog article about the importance of regular roof maintenance. You can continue using that blog piece for the rest of time. Not only can you leave that blog article on your website, but you can regularly share it on social media to get further outreach.

Become an Industry Thought Leader Using Inbound Marketing

When consumers seek out a business, they want someone they can trust, someone who not only provides good service but also has the proper industry experience and knowledge. How can you show that, beyond listing your years in business and official certifications? You can show your expertise by building good content on your website.

For instance, when you have a persona-based blog with content that your best customers would care about with many informative articles, this raises the opportunity of people finding your article on your website through organic searches. After they read that initial piece, you’ll have other offers to move that prospect through the buyer's process.

Inbound Marketing Nurtures Customer Relationships

Inbound marketing is great because you can nurture prospects who are not yet ready to buy. From awareness, through consideration, and onto decision-making, each phase is covered. This means if your prospects aren't quite ready to buy yet, you can nurture those leads with content very specific to their buyer’s stage and nurture them until they are ready to buy.

See Your Business Grow by Having a Strong Inbound Marketing Strategy

There are many benefits to having a strong inbound marketing strategy. You could take a DIY approach and take your time, or you can consider hiring an agency like Inbound 281 that can help you get up and running quicker.

Ready to take advantage of inbound marketing? Get in touch with us today!