Inbound marketing, in its simplest form is promoting a company and/or business through a variety of forms of content marketing including but not limited to; blogs, podcasts, videos, eBooks, white papers, eNewsletters, SEO, and social media.
On the other side of the spectrum there is outbound marketing. Strategies that are considered outbound marketing are various forms of marketing through buying attention. These forms include but are not limited to; flyers, billboards, TV advertisements and cold calling.
With inbound marketing, the objective is to reel in customers with constant quality content. The idea is to earn prospects as your customers instead of "buying" them.
Sure, inbound marketing requires a constant and uniform approach. You are going to need to align your marketing objectives through all outlets and be sure to be consistent.
However, by keeping a focus on inbound marketing methods, you will ultimately be able to generate more customer loyalty from your consumer base - which matters in the digital age.
As you probably already know, it can cost a ton of money to "buy" a new customer. However, to "earn" a new customer, all you really need is consistent quality content and great outlets.
Good News
The good news is that there are tons of ways in which you can achieve great results with inbound marketing. For example, social media. Social media has created an enormous opportunity for both inbound marketers and businesses that want to increase their inbound marketing efforts. Nowadays, you can reel in hundreds, if not thousands of potential customers with the click of a button - for free!
The fact is, this type of marketing is most effective for small and medium sized businesses. The businesses that can't afford to compete with the huge marketing and advertising budgets of the big box retailers and multi conglomerates.
Research has shown that the most effective businesses for inbound marketing are small and medium sized businesses. But also those that focus on high dollar value products, involve long research cycles, and/or knowledge based products.
The main reason for this is because this type of marketing allows you to connect and give back to a customer in a way that no other form of marketing can really do. By providing a potential customer with value and demonstrating your expertise, you will be able to effectively sell to a customer and keep them as a customer.
This customer you reel in will be more inclined to purchase a product and/or service from you because you have given them value and demonstrated that you care. You simply cannot do this without spending a ton of money on outbound marketing techniques.
In order to create an effective inbound marketing strategy/approach, you will need the necessary tools in which to utilize. To implement your strategy successfully, you will need to reach 4 stages in the consumer sales cycle.
First, you will have to attract the customer. Second, you will have to convert the customer. Third, you will have to close the customer. Fourth, you will have to delight the customer.
jInbound
This sounds like a lot of work - right? The truth is, it really is. However, with our product - jInbound - your marketing efforts on your Joomla website will be streamlined and automated.
We have created the ultimate inbound marketing plugin to put your entire inbound marketing on autopilot. With our plugin, you will be able to do the following; easily create optimized landing pages, convert leads with integrated forums, nurture your leads all the way down to your sales funnel, manage your leads with our customer relationship management software, track and measure your progress, and gain even more expertise with our video training.