Fashion or decisive strategy?
Whether in social networks, communications agencies or in the media, everywhere we hear and read about the new miracle weapon of Inbound Marketing .
However, the concept of inbound marketing is not as up-to-date as it seems. Over the past five to ten years, some American brand blogs and companies have already discovered this marketing strategy. Nevertheless, the awareness that inbound marketing is an essential tool is more recent in Europe. With the Internet and new consumer habits, this approach opens up completely new possibilities.
But what is "inbound marketing"?
The practice of inbound marketing or incoming marketing is easy to understand. It is a special form of marketing that tries to make the customer come to you, instead of looking for him, as it was in traditional approaches. This concept is therefore close to permission marketing, which is about obtaining the consent of the customer before requesting it.
To achieve this goal, each brand / company must become its own media which converts its audience to customers.
In practice there are 4 important steps:
The 4 steps of the inbound marketing strategy:
This methodology is cyclic, the phases repeat themselves and follow each other.
Step 1: Raise traffic of your website and / or blog through social networks and search engines;
Step 2: Transform visitors into potential customers by offering content via forms or for download;
Step 3: Engage and maintain the relationship with your 'audience' to accompany the Leads in their purchasing decisions and convert them to customers.
Step 4: Build the customer loyalty and make your customers the ambassador of your offer.
The principle of inbound marketing is therefore to attract prospective customers through intelligent and relevant content instead of feeding them with advertising. As a result, each company or brand has to become its own media to attract its target group.
However, a company will not become such a media overnight!
In order to achieve this, it should initially increase its visibility and try to become indispensable to its customers. By the time, the right resources and the right methods, it can then advance to become its own media.
The strategy of inbound marketing is particularly suitable for B2B companies or for the sale of complex products, for a simple reason: it reduces the acquisition costs and shortens sales cycles.
The fact that this strategy attracts more and more companies and marketers is due to the fact that it has proven itself: According to a comprehensive study by Hubspot ("State Of Inbound"), which was developed in collaboration with the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the leads generated by inbound marketing are 61% cheaper than the revenue generated in outbound marketing, while inbound marketing generates 54% more leads in average. It is therefore no coincidence that 3 out of 4 brand players in the world prefer an inbound approach.
We also note that the average cost of generating a 'lead' for inbound marketing is between 25 and 70 Euros, while outbound marketing is significantly higher (up to 250 Euros).
