Over time, access to technology and various media have opened the doors to new opportunities for the consumer, so the way of selling has had to adapt, always taking a step forward to offer adequately. the products and services.
Definitely, we all perfectly identify the traditional way of selling: intrusive ads, insistent calls that after 2 or 3 attempts we already managed to identify and ended up blocking, in short, any means of contact that would allow us to establish a merely sales pitch. , had been used to promote brands and products without providing information to the customer that would really help them choose a specific product.
As strange as it may sound, due to the new way of buying, the ideal today is to guide prospects to find your product/service by providing them with useful information that educates them and responds precisely to their needs.
Instead of persecuting and interrupting them as was done in the traditional practice, inform them and offer them valuable content so that they have the necessary tools so that they can choose the product/service they want at the right time; Not before, not after, because now they have full control over their purchasing process.
What is Inbound Marketing for and how does it work?
As already mentioned, inbound marketing works by focusing on the interests, needs, problems and desires of potential customers, factors that your company must be very clear about as they determine the strategy to help and satisfy your prospects through relevant content. that stick to your profile.
Inbound marketing consists of generating a communication and interaction channel that is consistent with the behavior and values of your buyer persona with the aim that they not only become customers, but that they themselves are promoters of your brand.
In other words, what you are looking for is to attract people who do not know you to your website to convert them into leads, then into customers, and finally, into loyal customers and promoters of your brand.
To achieve this, it is essential to spread the right message at each stage of the purchase process and even after the closing stage, in order to generate greater interest and establish a relationship of trust and empathy that lasts over time.
Inbound Marketing Methodology
The Inbound Marketing methodology consists of a cycle that is made up of 4 phases that correspond to the stages of the buyer’s journey: attraction, conversion, closing and loyalty.
Next, we describe what each of them consists of.
1. Attract
Although there are several means with which to generate traffic, the key is to plan a strategy that helps you attract qualified prospects by offering them content at the right time. This means that, instead of chasing them by interrupting them with invasive advertising, they must find you through the valuable content that you will offer such as articles, videos, social media posts, webinars, among others.
Therefore, in order for you to attract your ideal client, these contents must be directed to the correct sector, so that your prospects advance in their purchase process in a natural way. In this way, you will gain positioning on the Internet and increase traffic to your website, therefore you will be a reliable and authoritative brand.
2. Convert
Once you have traffic on your website, you should do everything possible to convert those visits into sales opportunities by establishing a conversation using the most appropriate resources for them, whether they are forms, emails or any other with which you can request their data from change of any content offer that is useful to them according to their profile and needs; They can be eBooks, webinars, infographics or even an interactive tool.
By obtaining personal information from your prospects, you can begin to create your database and then continue with the communication, guiding and supporting them through emails to convert them into customers.
3. Close
Once you have your database, it is important that you register it and integrate it with a CRM or an automation and lead nurturing tool; This way you can have greater control over the automated actions so that they are executed following the buyer’s journey cycle according to lead scoring, a technique that allows you to assess how interested a prospect is to determine when is the right time to convert them into a customer.
4. Delight
It is important to always be clear that the strategy does not end when a prospect becomes a customer; It is a cycle in which even after your leads purchase your product or service, you must continue to provide them with useful information to keep them but also so that they are the ones who recommend your brand and increase your prospect base.
What is needed to do Inbound Marketing?
Buyer persona
Being clear about who is the ideal customer for your product/service is undoubtedly the starting point for developing an effective inbound marketing strategy, because in this way you can establish your objectives and direct all your efforts only towards those who interest you as buyers.
Why is it important to build the buyer persona of your brand? Since the essence of inbound marketing is attracting customers through a non-invasive strategy, offering valuable content all the time, it is essential to know their interests, objectives and behaviors in order to provide them with exactly what they need through content that is relevant to them and useful and that they will find in the media they use the most.
Buyer’s journey
All buyers go through a process to acquire their product, before agreeing to a brand. Today people do their own research to compare their options and thus decide which of these is the best solution to their problem.
This series of steps that each person carries out before giving their vote of confidence to the product/service that will satisfy their need, is better known in Inbound Marketing as buyer’s journey and consists of 3 stages. :
- Discovery: The buyer becomes aware that he has a problem.
- Consideration: The buyer begins to look for options to solve his problem.
- Decision: The buyer chooses which of these options is the best for him.
Despite the fact that the buyer’s journey will always be made up of the same stages, the actions that will determine when a prospect passes from one to another vary from one brand to another, since these criteria are established based on the objectives and goals of each company.
Why is it important for Inbound Marketing?
Although this process sounds simple, the reality is that -just like building a buyer persona- it requires research and information gathering to understand exactly how your prospects buy to direct them to your product/service.
The importance of considering the buyer’s journey of your ideal client in an Inbound Marketing strategy, lies in the fact that if you are clear about what your buyers do at each stage, it will be much easier to plan what content you will offer them, since it must be relevant and adhere to to the stage you are in, in order to help you move forward in the buying journey until you decide to purchase your product or service.
SEO
In order to reach more people and increase the number of leads, it is also essential to be clear about where we want to position ourselves, that is, with which product/service we want to stand out and be recognized as the most reliable brand in that field.
Defining this will greatly help you drive more organic traffic to your website and position yourself as an expert on the subject. For this reason, it is also super important to have an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy, so that search engines find your brand more easily and place you in the first places according to its operation, which is made up of 3 stages:
- Discovery. In this stage, search engines discover your website and review the content you offer.
- Relevance. It refers to when search engines determine how relevant your content is to answer the queries that people can make by covering in their entirety the subtopics that can be derived from a particular topic.
- Authority. This stage is critical to classifying yourself as a trusted source that builds credibility through linking and other ways for search engines to view you as an authoritative site to rank high in search results.
