Warning: If you are a marketing guru or know-it-all, you may not find this blog post very useful.

However, if you’re a small business owner who is looking for growth and increased visibility; or a start-up needing new ways to diversify their marketing and advertising of products and services, then this is for you!

Even professionals seeking low cost alternatives to reaching their target audiences and dominating niche markets can benefit from becoming familiar with the ins-and-outs of Inbound Marketing, and this blog will highlight what the golden circles and defining principles are.

So…Why Inbound Marketing?

Traditional Marketing requires businesses to simply create an attractive website, buy a list of email addresses to add to their database, and then send people sales & marketing emails with no guarantees on whether they will receive a return on investment. Massive advertising budgets are allocated towards radio and TV advertising, Pay Per Click ads, and cold calling — which again, seldom offer a guaranteed return on their investment.

This type of advertising is referred to as Outbound Marketing, and the problem with this is that people have become tired of being bombarded on all fronts and aggressively sold to. Traditional Marketing is frigging annoying! I can count how many times I’ve responded or clicked on Ads, and I’m sure you can too.

Consumer buying behaviour has changed dramatically over the past decade: Nowadays, people use social networks, read blogs as well as user comments, and watch online videos such as YouTube to engage with what friends, family, and other consumers think of a product/service before forming an opinion and committing to buying. Access to a wealth of relevant information that they never had before has made consumers smarter and less susceptible to being lured into buying products they don’t want or need.

As a result, businesses have to change how they approach both potential and existing customers, and embrace the new evolution of marketing — Inbound Marketing.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

In short, Inbound Marketing is a more efficient and cost-effective way of getting your customers to find you, instead of the other way round.

“Inbound Marketing is marketing focused on getting found by customers. — @rickburnes

It’s the direct opposite of traditional marketing; where you target and shout at people who are neither ready to buy nor interested in your products — hoping that the louder you shout, the more they might listen.

How to do Inbound Marketing

This post is not a tutorial on how to become an Inbound Marketing Pro — a quick search on Google will provide tons of results that will guide you. The aim here is to give a few tips on how to think like one and ensure that your inbound marketing campaign is a success.

Creating a successful Inbound Marketing campaign is very simple (note that I said simple, not easy). There is an initial stage of marketing and content planning that I won’t get into on this post, so before you go ahead with executing the steps outlined below, make sure that you already have a marketing ‘game plan’ in place.

The first step is to attract the right audience to your website. Inbound marketers usually call this audience, ‘strangers’. How does one attract strangers to their website you might ask? Well, you create valuable content in the form of a blog posts (similar to this one…*smiles*), upload ‘rich media content’ such as YouTube videos, downloadable eBooks, and engage directly with prospects on social networking sites etc.

And what should you say to them? As any business should do, you’ll offer solutions to their problems, and provide help and advice. If you can’t help, guide them to where they can find what will best suit their needs. I did mention that it wouldn’t be easy…

At this stage, these ‘strangers’ would have changed status: They have now become visitors because they browse through your site, and engage with the content you’ve posted by commenting, or sharing/liking it on social media platforms. You and your contents are now similar to a very attractive person that stands out in a room — everyone wants to hear what they have to say and create a relationship with them.

The second step is to convert your visitors to into leads. Your visitors are on your website and your aim is to grab their contact information as quickly as possible so you can offer them relevant and personalised content that will guide them towards becoming your customers.

The way to convert visitors into leads is by creating forms, landing pages, call-to-actions and more. For instance you may create a call-to-action (CTA) that offers an eBook for free download, when visitors click on your CTA it takes them to a landing page where they can submit their contact information in return for the juicy eBook you’re offering — they get your eBook, and you get their contact details.

Now what you’ve just done here is a big step forward: You spotted five strangers looking at you, so you’ve confidently approached them, smiled and asked how you can help them! While they’re telling you who there are, what they want, and how to contact them, you get to suss out which ones best fit what you have on offer. In any case, you now have five phone numbers or business cards but you also know which one deserves a phone call the next day ☺ Slick eh!?

Inbound marketers are creative and willing to take risks, always trying different ideas and hypothesis. — @kakinwunmi

The third step — Close: So you’ve attracted strangers to your site and you have brilliantly converted your visitors into leads. Well done in getting this far, but your job’s not done yet! Just because you have people’s contact information doesn’t make them your customer. You need to seal the deal. Bear in mind that over 90% of your visitors or leads will not return to your website even if they’ve downloaded your resources — after all, visitors are usually just doing research.

You’ll still have to send them engaging emails that speak to them like real people, give them more resources to download, share your new blog posts, upload updated case studies, and offer trials or free consultations. You would need an email marketing software such as ActiveCampaign, or marketing automation tools like Hubspot to be able to perform this task effectively.

Remember, the five people who couldn’t take their eyes off you the night before? Well they have a memory like a gold fish, or maybe they’ve been distracted by someone equally attractive — your competitors. So it’s time to text or email to follow up, and keep them engaged. Set up an appointment or free consultation if appropriate, and show them that you value your new-found relationship.

The final step of implementing a successful inbound marketing campaign is what marketers call ‘Delight’. It’s common sense really. The idea here is that just because you’ve converted a stranger to a visitor, and finally a customer, doesn’t mean you should abandon them: Continue creating content that will appeal to strangers, visitors, leads and customers alike. The truth is that not all leads will become your customer, but creating content that will convert these leads into your brand ambassadors or promoters has it’s uses too — even if just as free advertising!

It’s common for people to focus all their time and attention on someone they just met. Don’t fall into this trap, and continue to keep everyone’s interests in mind, otherwise, you will quickly lose friends ☹

In fact, keeping track of existing customers and what they bought is essential to personalising your interaction with them and ensuring future sales. Customers’ purchasing history will enable you to offer related products they might be interested in, and allow you to offer more targeted advertising as you’ll have a better idea of what they’re more likely to buy.

Final thoughts

As I promised at the beginning of this post, the goal here was to provide useful inbound marketing tips to small businesses wanting increased visibility; startups needing new ways to approach marketing; as well as professionals on the lookout for low cost alternatives. I hope I’ve shown you the problem with traditional/outbound marketing, and succeeded in explaining what inbound marketing is in simple terms.

More importantly, I hope I’ve clarified the mindset behind inbound marketing, and highlighted the basic principles essential to securing the success of your campaign. To round up, here is a quote from an in-depth blog post by Rick Burns on Inbound Marketing & the Next Phase of Marketing on the Web:

“Instead of interrupting people with television ads, they create videos that potential customers want to see. Instead of buying display ads in print publications, they create their own business blog that people subscribe to and look forward to reading. Instead of cold calling, they create useful content and tools so that prospects contact them looking for more information.’’

Visit LIM CONCEPTS for more insight on Inbound Marketing.