Inbound marketing: definition and steps to optimise your web marketing
Inbound marketing is a real driver for getting your digital marketing strategy off the ground.
But what exactly is inbound marketing and what are the examples of companies that have succeeded thanks to it? And what approach should you adopt for your own company?
Let's lift the veil on inbound marketing and see how it generates conversion and performance.
What is inbound marketing?
Definition of inbound marketing
Inbound marketing, in B2B or B2C, is defined as an inbound marketing practice that is both permissive and effective. It consists of getting customers to come to you, rather than going to them yourself.
With this kind of strategy, you no longer need to use intrusive promotions to find your customers, as they will be attracted by your content and will therefore come to you more naturally.
To achieve this, inbound marketing works on the principle of a conversion funnel, in 4 stages.
Here are 4 key moments to optimise your web marketing:
Why choose inbound marketing?
- Your communication is less intrusive for prospects. Thanks to the visibility you've gained on the internet, particularly through search engine optimisation (SEO) or social networks, web users come across you "naturally", without feeling that they're being disturbed by your advertising. This makes them less suspicious of your brand.
- Inbound marketing makes your communications more relevant and interactive. Thanks to a content strategy, you can send messages that are relevant to the issues of the Internet users you are targeting. You convert more easily if you provide a concrete response to real problems.
- Implementing an inbound marketing strategy costs less than developing an outbound strategy... and the results can be impressive! Ultimately, inbound delivers a very good ROI.
Acquiring a prospect through inbound marketing costs 61% less than through traditional marketing.
SLN Web
Interested in setting up an inbound marketing strategy? To help you get to grips with the concept, let's take a look at the key stages.
Stage 1: Attracting visitors through content marketing
The aim is to generate qualified traffic to your website by attracting visitors with quality content (advice, tips, etc.) that provides solutions to their problems.
At the same time, web users need to be able to find your website easily:
- through search engines, mainly Google. This means optimising the natural referencing of your site or blog: your content is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) optimised;
- via social networks.
☝️Nous The principle is the opposite of advertising. By developing your content marketing in this way, you don't disturb your target audience, because you don't interrupt their programme in a way that is sometimes too commercial and intrusive (like TV advertising). Instead, you make them come to you in a much more natural and consensual way.
Step 2: Convert and generate qualified leads
The visitors are there, on your website. This is the time to build a relationship and gather information about them. You need to identify the "hot", "cold" and least interested contacts, in order to turn them into qualified leads. This is what we call a lead.
💡 Encourage your visitors to fill in their profiles, using a newsletter registration form for example.
Also in your newsletters, insert calls to action linking to landing pages dedicated to particular subjects: each web page devoted to a specific theme optimises your results in terms of data collection. This data is invaluable for recontacting interested parties who have been targeted in this way.
Step 3: Close sales with lead nurturing
Ready to turn your prospects into customers? Thanks to the collection of qualified data mentioned above, you can contact these prospects again until they become customers.
This is known as lead nurturing, a strategy that consists of supporting your prospect with content, or even more commercial meetings, to help them make the decision to buy.
Qualification and segmentation are essential here: you need to adapt to the subject matter and maturity of your prospect, so that you can act at the right moment.
Step 4: Build customer loyalty and make them your ambassadors.
A returning customer who speaks highly of you is worth its weight in gold!
But customer satisfaction and customer relations need to be nurtured on a daily basis: a loyal customer wants your proposals to continue, both in terms of content that nurtures them and in terms of appropriate commercial promises.
Make sure that they only have one thing to say: good things about you! This is known as promoting your company or being a brand ambassador.
Examples of companies that have succeeded thanks to inbound marketing
Inbound marketing is therefore a very comprehensive strategy, which needs to be adapted to your company and your ambitions. It's well worth the effort, as many companies have succeeded thanks to a well thought-out inbound strategy.
- MRC Groupe, for example, has increased its turnover by 50% in three years, thanks in particular to the development of its content marketing and the improvement of its SEO. The group, which assists companies with their remuneration policies, has also achieved a significant increase in its visibility on the web.
- Flat rental company Azur Online has also relied on inbound marketing to raise its profile, particularly via social networks. Thanks to the development of interactions with its customers, it has been able to improve its offer.
- Finally, we should mention iAdvize and its messaging platform. The company has been able to offer increasingly relevant content to its audience, thanks to in-depth work on its personas and the introduction of A/B testing.
The vocabulary of inbound: a language specific to digital marketing
We've listed below the main terms used, and their meanings, to help you feel more at ease with inbound marketing.
Persona
The term persona defines your ideal customer, as well as your different customer profiles (segmenting to sell better, always). It's also known as the buyer persona.
The main point is to imagine one or more human characters, so that you can get under their skin: find out their socio-demographic characteristics, and imagine the problems they face so that you can respond more effectively. This practice has proved its effectiveness, even in the e-commerce sector.
Example of persona marketing:
© Content Marketer
Content marketing
Also known as content marketing, content marketing involves putting in place an editorial strategy.
It involves attracting your prospects with quality content, using a variety of formats to capture their interest and build loyalty: blog articles, infographics, white papers, educational guides - all are opportunities to distil your advice, demonstrate your expertise and respond to the problems your potential customers are facing.
Natural referencing
High-quality content is also tailored to the constraints of search engines, i.e. optimised to be easily found on the web.
Customers type a query, a key expression, into a search engine like Google. Your aim is then to appear in the first results that appear so that your pages have a better chance of being consulted by your potential customers. This is the objective of a natural referencing strategy, also known as SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
Social media
In order to connect with consumers, your company also needs to be present on at least one professional social network (or social media) such as Linkedin, or other social networks such as Twitter or Facebook... to name but the best known!
In inbound marketing, you need to identify and acquire the audience present on these platforms, encourage their engagement and direct qualified contacts to your website.
Marketing automation
Marketing automation, as its name suggests, automates a large number of marketing actions. This saves precious time and improves team productivity.
Marketing automation is made possible by the use of dedicated software. For example, analytical tools can be used to intelligently segment communication targets (personas), so that prospects can be stimulated more effectively.
Lead generation
Lead generation refers to the interest shown in you by web users: requests for information, completion of online forms, newsletter subscriptions, etc.
Combine content marketing and marketing automation to support visitors at every stage of the inbound marketing conversion funnel. This is sometimes referred to as the conversion tunnel.
Several tools are becoming essential, and they need to be compatible and intelligently interwoven in order to fine-tune all the issues involved in analysing prospect behaviour, data, and so on. The aim is to perfect your marketing strategy to improve your conversion rate.
To broaden your field of vision, we list below a few relevant solutions for your customer relations.
🛠️ Professional emailing software :
- GetResponse
- SendinBlue
- Message Business
🛠️ CRM (Customer Relationship Management) :
- Team Leader
- CRM Initiative
- Sellsy
🛠️ Lead generation software:
- Datananas
- Webikeo
- Sparklane
Outbound marketing
This term refers to traditional communication and marketing activities.
This obviously includes all forms of advertising, but also all so-called " push" actions, where the company goes out to meet its prospects by sending them its sales proposal, as in a classic direct marketing mailing, for example.
On the web, you will already have come across this type of advertising: advertising banners, adwords or Google adwords, sponsored links, etc.
Meet your leads
You now have the keys to opening the doors to qualified lead generation for your company.
You've identified the inbound marketing process, grasped the associated vocabulary, and have some serious ideas for choosing the right software to set up your marketing automation.
What's more, this principle works just as well in BtoC as it does in BtoB, and is suitable for companies of all sizes.
Now all you have to do is define your inbound marketing strategy in detail... and make an appointment with your leads!