It is a strategy of Digital Marketing allowing companies to become their own media. The principle is to attract prospects via relevant content rather than soliciting them via advertising.
As you will have understood, the goal of this strategy is to bring customers to you, in short, to attract by being attractive, instead of pushing unwanted messages.
Inbound marketing is a set of tactics involving content creation, marketing automation, lead nurturing, and social media.
Watch this short video to understand the concept in pictures:
Specifically, how does inbound marketing work?
Inbound Marketing is a strategy that breaks down into several steps:
1. ATTRACT - Traffic generation: the company will seek to develop the traffic of its website to a targeted audience (its potential prospects) in order to make itself visible. This step consists of acquiring traffic from targeted visitors, also known as visitors of interest.
2. INTERACT - Once the traffic has been established, we will try to transform this audience into qualified contacts by means of forms, which will make it possible to collect data on visitors (in the GDP compliance). This interaction is based on the provision of solutions and information that help the targets to answer their questions and problems.
3. RETAIN - With the link being established, the company will be able to nurture and grow the relationship with these contacts through targeted e-mails and high-value-added content. The aim will be to refine the targeting and to bring the most important part of the contacts to become prospects, then loyal customers and brand ambassadors.
These three stages, which can be broken down into several others, are called the Inbound Marketing funnel or, in good English: the Inbound marketing funnel.
What successful examples in Inbound Marketing?
We are going to shed light on a small French company that hires about ten people, which did not exist a few years ago, which had no website before 2015, and which nevertheless today generates 100% of its new business. through customer acquisition in inbound marketing.
Who is it?
Simply from the agency that founded this blog.Com Explorer
And, by the way, if you want to be supported in your Inbound marketing strategy and its operational implementation, And if you are putting us in competition with other Inbound Marketing agencies, also read our advice for making the right choice of the right Inbound Marketing agency for your project.
What has allowed us to increase our presence and gain market share is to have always been committed to giving the best to our customers, in particular by providing quality content through our blog.
Why do companies choose inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing was born because companies need more efficient, less expensive, and better suited to new uses to win over their customers. This is, moreover, the raison d'etre of the marketing agency ComExplorer, which was born to provide the market with answers on this subject.
At the risk of breaking open doors, the Internet has transformed the marketing and commercial landscape to such an extent that the relationship between the company and its prospects has completely changed. Gone are the days of door-to-door salespeople or aggressive canvassing over the phone (although some still struggle with it!).
Future customers no longer want to be solicited by salespeople or disturbed by advertising. They want to be informed, advised, and supported in their buying process.
- He isROI oriented, which makes it a center of investment and not a center of cost, which allows small companies to be able to compete with larger ones ;
● It gives you the ability to target a specific audience by providing tailored content that attracts potential customers;
● Inbound marketing is mostly done online so its reach goes beyond the physical territory of the business, office, or point of sale.
In the end, the great advantage of this approach is that you generate leads by relying on your own visibility, thanks to your website. You are therefore not (or little) dependent on the platform lead buying, or somehow "rent" your audience by buying advertising.
Let's now see the 4 steps of the inbound marketing strategy with examples of companies that use it.
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What to Remember for Blogging In Inbound Marketing, having a blog is essential. It will constitute the lung of content that will be distributed to all of your points of contact. It will allow you to communicate regularly, maintain the relationship with your audience and strengthen your brand image. |
3) Social media
Animate social media in BtoBis a difficult and less obvious task than in a BtoC context. One of the most common myths around B2B on social media is that it won't work because "nobody cares about my industry".
Take for example the Novartis laboratory. At first glance, this is not the type of company that we imagine to be a reference in social media. However, this company has built a solid base on Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter, to the extent that several hundred thousand "fans" follow the brand's news continuously.
These are not selfies or other self-promotional content that you will find on their page. No, instead you will see this kind of post:
It is thanks to effective storytelling and a posture of sharing that Novartis has succeeded in finding its place. The most important thing is to know your target audience, understand their expectations, and create a unique universe and tone for the brand.
What to remember for social networks
They are places of exchange. It's an opportunity to build your brand image, make yourself known and promote your content. Be relevant, and specific to your values, and generate engagement through your posts.
4) SEO
According to Business to Community, 60% of clicks on search engines are on the first 3 results (excluding advertising) .
When we talk about "search engines", understand Google.
Indeed, 96% of the total volume of internet searches in France is done on Google. And reaching the top 3 of Google results is a bit like the red carpet in Cannes: everyone wants to climb the stairs, but places are expensive.
The reward? Be positioned on the requests of Internet users, and therefore be found!
You will need to start with selecting the right keywords, optimize the pages of your site (responsive, semantic, loading time, etc.), and work on image referencing notably.
Consider including internal links (i.e. links from one page to another on your own site) and external links (those to another site) in your content.
Step 2: Convert
When you have attracted your audience, you need to convert them into customers. For this, you need to feed it regularly. Informative newsletters, recurring calls-to-action, invitations to share on social networks, and premium content (such as, for example, a white paper ) allow the “lead nurturing". The objective is to lead your prospects with a project to the end of the conversion funnel, and for this, they must be accompanied. By qualifying your leads, you will know more and more about them, you will be able to personalize their relationship in order to create a privileged dialogue, to make them loyal customers.
Here is the effective conversion method:
1) Call-To-Action (CTA)
This is the first step to engaging your visitors through your site. Concretely, aCTA is a button/message which encourages the Internet user to take any action, for example: "Download the e-book". The shorter the message, the more effective it is. Attract users' attention to the CTA with flashy colors or attractive images: the goal is to get them to click! Place it for example at the end of an article and in the bar on the right of the screen.
What to remember for Calls-to-action
Your CTAs should be intuitive to facilitate action. Use action verbs and be brief. In addition, have a relevant offer and register in a given context. Finally, vary your offers (ebook, checklists, free consultations, etc.).
An example : AMC Theater
. At the time, there was a lot of excitement when promoting the movie “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues”.
How do you get people to see this movie at AMC Theater?
They've created an infographic on " top tips " for dressing like Ron Burgundy himself. At the end of the infographic, there's a CTA that encourages people to see the movie in their homes.
2) Landing Page
This is usually the page to which a CTA redirects. A Landing Page contains the offer that the user wishes to have when he clicks on the CTA. Like the
latter, the content of a landing page must be clear and the offer relevant and contextualized.
Have a contact form for the visitor to fill out in exchange for your content.
The different types and formats of content that you can offer are multiple. Among the main ones are:
● The white paper or ebook, which provides in-depth information and helps the prospect understand their problem in order to consider the right solutions;
● The document model or template, which will allow the Internet user to take charge of part of his project himself;
● The quiz, to test your knowledge;
● The checklist, to check the stages of your project;
● The specifications model, to prepare your call for tenders or your request for consultation;
● The commercial documentation, to find out about the offers;
● The presentation of the company, to learn about the DNA, the teams, the know-how...
The key is to put yourself in your prospect's shoes to determine which of these contents will be the most useful to him and which will encourage him to make contact.
Indeed, it is a so-called "give-and-take" relationship, in exchange for his contact details, you offer him your offer. Place visuals to make the download more attractive.
A simple example of a landing page structure might look like this:
3) Emailing and marketing automation
Marketing automation is the practice of automating repetitive actions. With modern marketing tools, it is not only possible to automate a large number of tasks, but also to trigger actions (such as the automatic sending of an email, for example) at the right time to the right person.
This Automating Will allow the company to keep in touch intelligently with its prospect, only by transmitting the right amount of information to him at the most opportune moment.
In this step, lead nurturing is essential. It is simply the fact of bringing a prospect to maturity (a lead) by "feeding" him with content that interests him... until he is ready to move on to the commercial stage.
The principle is simple :
● You have a lead database.
● Not all are qualified.
● You, therefore, need to “feed” them with content in order to qualify them for your offer.
To properly carry out your lead nurturing strategy, don't forget to first determine your audience.
Then, it is good to segment it according to common characteristics, and its place in the purchase cycle in order to send the right e-mail to the right person, at the right time.
One way to do this is through email marketing.
An example: Bonobos
The American ready-to-wear e-commerce site had launched an original email campaign. In the email, there are 4 paths represented by 4 different needs. These needs are materialized by 4 different clothing styles (elegant, comfortable, bad-ass, and impressive). They add value to it because they help you find the style that suits you.
What to remember for lead nurturing
Your emails and your lead nurturing, in general, should not offer several ideas/messages at the same time, at the risk of losing your leads. Everything must be clear, with a specific objective. Finally, consider automating certain tasks. Your lead nurturing can be, it will save you time.
Step 3: Sell
With regard to the commercial part, we will speak of " inbound sales ". It is the commercial practice, directly inspired by the inbound marketing spirit, which consists in preserving the quality of the relationship with its prospect in a sales exercise centered on listening to needs, and not on selling at all costs. !
In two words: a qualitative sale.
This does not mean that the business practices that have been taught so far are to be left in the locker room. Quite the contrary! A sales exercise must remain... sales.
On the other hand, the goal is to help the prospect understand the value of your offer by demonstrating its advantages and benefits; unlike a discussion of price, focused solely on product features.
This is how the terminology "marketing" has appeared, and which aims to align the Sales and marketing teams towards the same objective, with the same KPIs and the same vocabulary (yes, it speaks to you, the fact that a lead does not have the same meaning between a salesman and a marketer?).
In the phase where you will be in discussion with the prospect, the goal will be to explore his request in more depth. Ask him questions about his goals to achieve, why is it important to him, what are the challenges he faces, and is there an urgency to solve this problem?
No emergency, no problem. No problem, no solution!
The inbound sales exercise is done to make prospects who really want to buy adhere to its offer. This is the key to establishing a long-term business relationship and thus to building customer loyalty.
Step 4: Build loyalty
Loyalty should also be part of your inbound strategy. Indeed, maintaining the relationship with your customers so that they are loyal and become promoters of your brand is somewhat the ideal scheme. Emailing can also be used from a loyalty perspective just like social networks. A good email should be personalized, uncluttered, illustrated with images and CTAs.
An example: JetBlue
The JetBlue airline relaunch campaign is a good example of a successful loyalty strategy. Emails were automatically sent after a long period of inactivity from his prospects. These emails were personalized, and used poignant vocabulary such as "Love", "Let's stay together", "We're on break"... The calls to action were well placed.
Finally, the email ended with the company values with each sentence beginning with the letters JETBLUE.
Click on the image to enlarge :
What key indicators to follow in your marketing campaigns?
The table below will give you some tips:
Why should content be at the heart of your inbound strategy?
The main principle of inbound marketing is "to be found". This is where you need to give your visitors reasons for wanting to pursue a relationship with your company. Otherwise why would they stay on your site?
What are the benefits of inbound marketing?
It amplifies sales and marketing processes
With inbound marketing, your sales and marketing teams join forces to create the most useful and relevant content for prospects, in order to attract them (this is called Smarketing). As it is said Inbound Marketing, the Ultimate way to know everything! it has a large number of advantages.
Here are the main ones:
It increases visibility and notoriety
Like, comment, share your content and you will be all the more visible.
It educates prospects in the digital world in which they evolve
When you produce content for your target audience, inbound marketing will drive the quality of traffic and leads to your website.
The key figures of inbound marketing
Here are some figures that we thought were important to remember:
● Emails have a return on investment (ROI) of approximately 4,300%, so they can finance themselves.
● Nearly 50 million businesses now have a Facebook page.
● Companies that create 15 blog posts per month generate an average of 1,200 new leads per month.
● 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared every day (source: AOL / Nielsen) .
● Emails sent through marketing automation generate 18 times more revenue than traditional emails.
● Shoppers perform an average of 12 searches before even going to the site of a specific brand.
● The average consumer attention span is only 8 seconds .
● Companies that use marketing automation experience a 417% increase in average revenue increase for companies that have implemented a Marketing Automation solution (according to Annuitas group).
● BtoB companies that regularly blog generate on average 67% more leads than those that do not blog (according to Hubspot).
● The leads generated byInbound Marketing cost 61% less than those generated by traditional marketing.
● Buyers go through about 57% of the buying process before even talking to someone about a sale.
● Interactive content generates 70% of conversions , compared to only 36% for passive content.
● 70% of customers would rather learn about a business through articles than through ads.
