Leads from Inbound marketing on average cost 61% less as compared to outbound leads.

Inbound practices produce 54% more leads than traditional outbound marketing.

On average, marketers using inbound practices can double the website conversion rate faster than with outbound practices.

As typical with any upcoming industry, statistics such as above are abundant online for inbound marketing space as well. A simple query on search engines will list out several hacks of ensuring success through inbound marketing. Instead of sifting through a million pieces of data, you can simply continue reading this article.

Not a new concept by any means, but inbound marketing is gaining traction quickly only now when consumer-centricity has become indispensable to marketers and organisations. How do you get potential customers to notice your brand? How do you get customers to voluntarily come to you and check out your products or services? Inbound marketing is the key answer to these questions. Digital marketers today swear by inbound marketing and SEO optimisation to draw in the target customer by leveraging customer-specific data patterns, unlike outbound marketing that blanket bombards consumers with generic and invasive marketing tactics.

Specifically, inbound marketing involves designing of strategy that rests heavily on content creation based on ICP (Ideal Customer Persona), which allows marketers to nearly impart the same value that a potential customer could be looking for. The customers thus drawn in can ultimately be converted into active sales leads.

Inbound marketing involves four stages:

-Attract the ideal customer with your content. Your ideal customer would already be searching for content or solutions in your area of expertise. The content and solutions you put out should be able to attract the attention of your ideal customer.

One way to do this is by creating and publishing blogs, articles, white papers, social media content, and other forms of content that provide value. These can include how-to guides for your products, information about solutions and challenges that your potential customers could be facing, customer testimonials, and details on promotions or discounts.

Use a solid SEO strategy to optimise the visibility of your content. Keyword research focused on your audience and their specific needs can help you reach out to them more keenly. It’s also important to make sure that the content on your website, along with your social media campaigns, are SEO-optimised, while balancing it with lucid dialogue. This way, your content and information will organically appear on the search engine results page (SERP) when your audience searches.

-Convert your audience into leads by engaging with them sporadically. Ensure you communicate with your audience and highlight your value proposition through relevant information. Be cautious to not hard sell or over sell yourself. One of the most effective tactics that one can use to convert website visitors to sales lead is to embed a call-to-action (CTA) prompt or opt-in forms for newsletters in the landing pages.

-Network and connect the customer by focusing on finding a solution to their challenges, rather than focusing on selling. This way, you will be able to provide great value to your right-fit customers. Your team should be advisors who can lead the conversation from a position of expertise. E-mail marketing is a good way to nurture your leads and convert them to customers.

Nurturing leads can be a long-term process. Use CRM and marketing automation tools to create automated workflows and draw insights from your engagement with the leads.

-Delight your customer by converting them into brand ambassadors. Chatbots and surveys help you better understand your customers’ specific requirements. Chatbots help you answer your customers’ specific questions and enable them to take advantage of your unique offerings. Satisfaction surveys will help you get feedback and even get ideas for improving products and services. Social media listening is also one of the strategic means to gather valuable customer feedback. Respond to all these interactions with information and changes that show that you are listening and care about your customers.

Since the content provided by inbound marketing is designed to be what the audience is searching for, it provides dramatically better results than traditional marketing. Here are some of the advantages of inbound marketing.

· Increases brand awareness: Majority of purchases – B2B or B2C – today start with an online search. So, if your company’s content appears in the top search results, it improves your brand awareness.

· Increases brand credibility: Since you are educating and engaging with your audience before they actively enter the buying process, you increase your brand credibility.

· Reduces cost: As you create and curate content that attracts organic leads, inbound marketing is an investment that builds higher value over a period. According to a recent report by HubSpot, inbound marketing leads cost 62% less than outbound leads.

Inbound marketing makes your audience feel that they are not being sold to. As they come to you rather than you going to them, the audience is more likely to be converted, reducing your sales overheads. It is based entirely on organic leads, so it relies solely on your marketing team’s intelligence and skills rather than a huge budget. In short, it’s the intelligent way to market your brand.

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*The authors are Manoj Nair, Head of Marketing, Infosys BPM & Durba Ghosh, Corporate Marketing Manager, Infosys BPM