Customer-focused marketing
The current business philosophy states that it is not enough to attract customers to your channels, but you must also help them, guide them and retain them even after you have closed the sale. This way you create valuable relationships that last through time. One of the pillars of inbound marketing is teamwork between sales, marketing, and customer service departments. By being aligned, you have the opportunity to cover all the needs of the client to offer a personalized experience that invites the client to stay with you and retain others.Differences between inbound marketing and traditional marketing
The most important difference between inbound marketing and traditional is the way to attract customers. Both strategies have value in increasing your company’s sales, however, they have different approaches to how you approach your leads. Traditional marketing or outbound marketing has a one-way sense where your brand issues the message and consumers are the recipients without any greater relationship with you. Traditionally, companies use mass and offline media as channels. Such strategies have a distinct focus on sales in most cases.Added value for your customers
For its part, inbound marketing is based on a simple premise: if you create quality content for your ideal customers you can attract qualified leads while building trust and credibility for your brand. Outbound marketing can be intrusive, especially when using techniques such as phone calls or leaving information in the mailbox. While inbound marketing seeks to be as invasive as possible. A robust inbound marketing strategy allows you to better leverage your company’s resources to build stronger ties with each of your customers. For example, you can receive their real-time feedback on both what they like and what they don’t from your products.
Inbound Marketing Phases
Any inbound marketing strategy is to provide information and customer support at each stage of the marketing funnel. This process, in turn, is divided into four distinct stages: attraction, acquisition, conversion, and loyalty. Some experts also divide them into attracting, converting, closing and delighting.1) Attraction
When creating content, you should do so with the type of customers you want to attract when creating content. To do this, you need to know who your ideal customers are and what kind of content they might find useful. It’s important to provide them with relevant information at the right time to connect with your audience. Each phase has its own tools to achieve your goals. In the case of this first stage, you can spread the content with paid ads in search engines, SEO, blogs, social networks, and particular strategies. One of the advantages of inbound marketing is that content continues to generate visits and leads long after it is published.2) Recruitment
In this second phase, the focus is on turning users who arrive on your website into potential customers. The idea is that you invite them through calls to action, to participate in the offers and promotions that you have available or to leave their data for them to be contacted in the future. To achieve the goals of this phase, you can design landing pages with forms for information collection, launch campaigns and offers on social networks, create a user database, and design strategies to increase engagement with your brand in different channels.
3) Conversion
The hardest part of any marketing strategy is closing the sale. In the case of inbound marketing is at this stage when you take advantage of all the information you have previously collected to offer the customer the product they are looking for. Ideally, you use some kind of CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) to connect with your leads in the database. Here you can also use automated techniques that will let you know when is the right time to close the sale, depending on the phase in the cycle your customer is. Also, the goals of this phase may vary depending on the scope and goals you’ve set for the campaign. At launch, you may be more interested in the customer signing up on the database or a trial period of your service than selling it itself.4) Loyalty
Every sale is an opportunity to retain. The ultimate goal of inbound marketing is to retain customers and provide them with memorable experiences. It is a common mistake to neglect this stage and forget about the customer once the sale is finished. At this stage, you must delight the consumer: offer superior customer service. Create content that fits their needs, use email marketing tools, and try to maintain communication with the customer to ensure your next purchase is with you.Inbound Marketing: the new marketing paradigm
Inbound marketing represents an opportunity to efficiently invest the marketing budget. This way you can create awareness about you and attract the customers you are looking for at a lower cost than with traditional strategies. At the center of inbound marketing is, adding value to your target audience at every stage of the sales cycle to deliver memorable user experiences.This post is also available in: Español
