inbound marketing

What is Inbound Marketing?

There’s a lot of buzzwords in the digital marketing world today, but thankfully inbound marketing is pretty easy to understand. Inbound marketing refers to attracting the attention of prospects to your website rather than outwardly advertising your products or services.

For example, if someone wanted to know how to start making money online, they could search for either term, and they’d most likely come across a website’s blog that contains information about that particular topic. This is inbound marketing at work.

Benefits of inbound marketing

#1 Inbound Marketing Builds Trust

Inbound marketing is at work 24/7, 365 days a year. A prospect can always land on your website, check out a blog post, or enter their details in a contact form. Inbound marketing also tends to be more trustworthy than outbound marketing.

If a customer comes across your website when they’re searching for a solution to a problem, they can check out your site in their own time.

#2 Inbound Marketing Is Cost-Effective

According to research by HubSpot, inbound marketing costs around 62% less per lead than outbound marketing. While HubSpot’s state of inbound marketing report states that, on average, businesses using inbound marketing tend to save around $14 for every customer they acquire compared to outbound methods such as email marketing.

Examples of inbound marketing

#1 Blogs

Perhaps the most well-known form of inbound marketing is the blog. Click on any company website, and you’ll be able to find a dozen posts making up their blog that will educate prospects about the particular company, the products they offer, and their industry expertise.

Companies like Monday, a project management software, use their blogs as fantastic learning resources for prospects who visit their site.

inbound marketingWhen you head over to Monday’s blog, you’ll notice that the blog is broken down into different sections based on the different customers reading their blog and the industries they serve.

No matter what industry you are in or what sort of product you are selling, having a blog is always beneficial. Take Fantasy Jocks as an example- even with a niche as narrow as fantasy football, they have a blog that gives visitors a chance to understand more about everything from the rules of the game to which Twitter accounts to follow.

inbound marketingEven brick-and-mortar businesses like law firms and dental practices are understanding the need to have an online presence.

For example, the  Law Offices of Jay Knispel have a blog that targets multiple keywords that their likely clientele are searching for, helpful information that people seeking personal injury advice could find worth reading, and more on their frequently updated blog.

This in turn means their site brings in more visitors, traffic, backlinks, and leads.

#2 Case Studies

Case studies are a way for companies to showcase their expertise by detailing how their products or services have helped a customer overcome a problem they were facing. A company that produces high-quality case studies is Mailchimp.

As you can see in the screenshot below, Mailchimp uses very specific titles for their case studies. These titles help give the reader a clear understanding of the specific problem Mailchimp solved for that customer.

#3  Infographics

Infographics are a valuable way for a prospect to get a quick snapshot of facts and stats related to the topic they’re searching for. Infographics are particularly useful for those prospects who prefer to take in a topic visually rather than digesting long-form written content. If an infographic is particularly useful, there’s a good chance other websites will link to it in their content which can often provide a nice traffic boost to the website of the infographics creator.

The infographic below is an excellent example of a visually pleasing piece of content that gives an overview of the steps required to start a law firm.

Image Source

#4 Guides

Lastly, guides are normally longer and more intense blog posts. These are your pillar posts and what you normally link back to from other pages on your site. Most people would put in a solid 5000 to 8000 words when creating guides and if created well, they are absolute backlink magnets.

Nectar, an employee recognition software, frequently creates helpful guides that their potential customers could find useful. This one, for example, is 10,000 words strong!

Wrapping It Up

This article should have given you a small taster of some of the different inbound marketing strategies you can use to attract prospects to your website. You’ll need to make sure your website is optimized for SEO, but once you’ve got that in place alongside the kind of content that resonates with your audience, you’ll be able to consistently attract new prospects to your website.

Freya Kuka is the founder of the personal finance blog CollectingCents that teaches readers how to grow their passive income, save money, improve their credit score, and manage debt. She has been featured in publications like Business Insider, Fox Business, the Huffington Post, and GoBankingRates. @CollectingCents

Inbound marketing stock photo by bearsky23/Shutterstock