If you are given a power to choose, do you prefer to take control or being controlled? Pretty sure that you would answer taking control. That is also the concept of Inbound Marketing.
Over the years, marketing world has shifted from offline to online to a combination of both. Those three marketing practices still involve the same activity: promoting through campaign or advertisement. In online marketing, however, there has been a shifting of angle in doing advertisement, causing an alteration in customer – business connection.
Through Inbound Marketing, promoting business is becoming more customer-centric.
How do we understand Inbound Marketing?
INBOUND MARKETING VS OUTBOUND MARKETING
There is inbound and there is outbound. How to differentiate them easily is that inbound focuses on pulling, while outbound focuses on pushing.
Outbound marketing is every marketing practice that acts to push advertising to audience. Imagine seeing a TV ads, billboard, or receiving telemarketing. Can the audience refuse receiving them? No. It’s because they are less targeted, even non-targeted. Despite being polished with language or visuals that are suitable to the target audience, still, people who are not relevant can see the passing ads or promotion.
Although still actively utilized in today’s businesses, the outbound practice is considered old style, receiving the name “traditional marketing”.
On the other hand, inbound marketing works by pulling the audience to come to the brand by offering something that they like, which is relevant content. Inbound marketing commonly utilizes using blogs or editorials as media, which is why it is also called content marketing.
Instead of blindly consider everyone as audience, it focuses more on meeting the consumer at the right place and on the right time. Everything is calculated so that customer can find the brand, only when they want to. How? By utilizing good SEO practices, so that they can find your website when they make a search.
The outcome? Customers will feel more connected and even loyal to the brand as they walk in because they want to and not being forced.
GOOD PRACTICE OF INBOUND MARKETING
If inbound marketing is not pushing the audience to buy, does it mean that a brand cannot sell through their content?
No matter how angelic inbound marketing sounds, its final purpose is still to obtain prospects and convert them into sales. It still sells products and services, but in a much subtler way. It does not encourage hard-selling, but rather promotes what the brand or the product can do through the content. A hint of the brand is usually included only at the end part.
Good inbound marketing also relies on customers persona and good keywords because relevance is everything.
There is a saying that marketers should not try to beat their competitors, but instead beat the keywords used. Choosing the correct keywords and use them correctly will invite more audience to visit your website. And if your contents are good enough, they will be more likely to trust your credibility and find you reliable for good information.
INTERACTIVE MARKETING
Inbound marketing aims to build a solid relationship with customers, and not a single relationship works with one-way communication.
In outbound marketing, it is only the brand who does the talking, while the customers can only see and listen. With inbound marketing, communication is made possible.
Contents that are created should always bring value to the audience, so engagement can be done. One of the easiest way to attract engagement is by performing inbound marketing through social media. Facebook as a social media platform with most users all over the world also sees this opportunity; thus, creating a fanpage so brands can connect to their customers better, and customers can share how they think and feel about the brands. The voices of the customers will be very useful for the brands’ future improvement.
Still, the control is on the customers’ hands. They will engage when they want to engage, where to engage, or not at all. That’s why rather than competing to be eye-catchy like traditional marketing, modern marketing cares more about value in order to retain the relationship with customers.
Have you decided to switch into inbound marketing? Using content is the key to a more effective digital marketing. It is time to stop pushing people to buy and focus more on how they can make them like us voluntarily. One of the beauty of inbound marketing is that a brand can share its stories and be an inspiration to the audience.
Read more about how to start content marketing for your business here.
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Start your content marketing with AlpharusMedia now to get your new customers. With our years of experience in digital marketing, we can help create content that is optimized for SEO. If you want to put some targeted ads, we can also help you do Search Engine Marketing with Google Ads, and also put ads on Facebook, the largest social media platform. Discuss with us more by clicking here.