With so many different marketing strategies, they can start to blend together after a while. If you’ve forgotten about inbound marketing and what it is, this is the blog for you. If you’ve never even heard of inbound marketing, this blog is definitely for you! If you are wanting more tips, tricks, and lessons on all things marketing, give us a follow for more content!
What is inbound marketing?
In short, inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on providing solutions that your target audience is looking for. The target audience being your current and future customers, the ones that are already aware of your brand. The idea behind inbound marketing is creating content that customers don’t feel is a sales pitch. The ultimate goal is to create a long-term relationship with your customers. This strategy involves a myriad of content types which include:
Social Media Posts
Blog Posts
Infographics
Videos
E-books
News Articles
Email
Keep in mind, these are just the content types. The actual meat of these can vary from platform to platform and post to post. The overall theme is to make sure you are providing valuable and entertaining information to your target audience. Also keep in mind that customers will value the quality of work over the quantity of work, so make sure that your content is up to par with their standards.
How do you utilize inbound marketing?
Now that we have a basic understanding of what inbound marketing is, it’s time to move on to using it in your marketing strategy. Above, we listed the different content forms that you can use, but let’s narrow it down to one and get specific. Social media posting is probably the most widely used inbound marketing content type and is popular with customers when trying to create that long-term relationship and trust that you want when utilizing inbound marketing.
Let’s review three ways that you can use social media for inbound marketing:
Promotion
Promote your own content! This is the most obvious of steps, but some people may forget. Create valuable and entertaining content that you believe will resonate with your customers. You can repurpose content as well. Made a YouTube video? You can repurpose that into Instagram Reels or Facebook Stories. You can target niche audiences with hashtags and keywords. Make sure that again, you are putting an emphasis on the quality of your posts and not so much on how many posts, some may see it as spammy to post too much. Avoid over-posting on all your accounts.
Community
It can be a daunting task starting out in today’s e-commerce world. It seems vast, and it may feel like you’re going nowhere but if you can start to build your own community within each social media platform, you’re building long-term relationships. Social media is a great way to show behind-the-scenes activities and build that trust between you and the customers. Facebook Groups are a great way to get customers together in one place and this can also be a great opportunity for you to gauge how well your content is performing as well as get content ideas from their comments, questions, and concerns.
Influencer/UGC
Another great asset and a bonus from today’s social media advancements are utilizing influencers or UGC (User-generated content) for traction. This can give an authentic feel for customers to relate to and grow that trust you need. If you’re unsure of what UGC or influencer marketing is, check out this blog here. Another great advantage of going the influencer route is possibly hitting customers that may not follow you. Your brand gets more exposure this way, possibly leading to an increase in sales.
Moving away from social media, another widely used inbound marketing content type is email. Email is used by pretty much every person online and is how most brands communicate with their customers. But what types of emails could you send? We’ve done the work for you and compiled a quick list of ideas:
Onboarding/Welcome Email
Discounts/Sales Promotions
Cart Abandonment
New & Noteworthy
Trending Products
Inbound marketing is a great strategy to help you start building a long-term relationship with your customers that facilitates trust in the relationship between the brand and the buyer. With so many content forms and social media apps, there are boundless opportunities for brands just like yours to garner a large following and gain the trust you’re looking for in your customers. Make sure to always keep content engaging, informative, and well thought out. Quality over quantity!
If you found this article useful, give it a like! We would love to hear feedback so let us know what you thought! If you would like help or need digital marketing assistance, reach out to us. We’re happy to help with any questions you may have!
Sources
Digital Marketing Institute, “What Is Inbound Marketing?”, Clodagh O’Brien, August 23, 2022, https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/what-is-inbound-marketing, Accessed February 28, 2023
Salesforce, “What is Inbound Marketing?”, Salesforce, https://www.salesforce.com/resources/articles/inbound-marketing/, Accessed February 27, 2023
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