1. What is Inbound Marketing?
Simply put, Inbound Marketing is a process that helps businesses create a large number of potential customers, and urge them to convert.
Inbound Marketing uses many different forms of marketing such as Content Marketing, Blog, Event, SEO, Social Media,… All activities are aimed at creating brand awareness and attracting customers to the business. While Outbound Marketing searches for customers, Inbound Marketing focuses on visibility, so potential customers find you. Instead of “getting attention,” companies using Inbound Marketing focus on creating valuable content for customers to build awareness, develop relationships, and generate leads.
2. Why is it necessary to build an Inbound Marketing campaign?
2.1. Benefits of Inbound Marketing
Inbound Marketing helps businesses become more attractive to customers because they don’t make people feel like they’re being sold on. Besides, businesses also receive 3 outstanding benefits from this form of marketing:
Save Marketing costs
Because Inbound Marketing is often an online marketing strategies. Therefore, it costs less than Outbound Marketing. Based on content creation and optimization of your Website for search rankings,… Inbound Marketing can attract real customers interested in your products. Thanks to that, you will focus on the right potential customer file. From there, Marketing costs will be used more effectively and economically.
Create good relationships between businesses and customers
Inbound Marketing creates an environment to connect people who are truly interested in the content you share and retain potential customers. Besides, this form of marketing also helps optimize search engines and brand awareness through shares on customers’ social networks. And this is the “key” for businesses to succeed in today’s harshly competitive market context.
Improve your business’s ROI
Inbound Marketing can bring higher ROI to businesses. Partly because it has a relatively low cost compared to some other marketing methods. Furthermore, Inbound Marketing also provides you with indicators to measure the effectiveness of your Marketing campaign. You can rely on that to review your campaigns and make appropriate adjustments. That’s why the ROI index can change more positively.
2.2. Who can use Inbound Marketing campaigns?
Every field or any profession can apply Inbound Marketing. However, not everyone can be successful when applying this marketing method. If you’re not sure, here are some questions to help you assess your readiness for an Inbound Marketing campaign:
Have you been creating great content?
Is your content truly useful and helps potential customers make decisions? Are you giving customers the power to choose the right brand, product or service? Do you create content that provides solutions to users?
If so, you can repurpose your existing content to create something even more valuable for potential customers. For example, turn a Blog post into a Video, turn an Email into a useful Checklist. There are many ways to do it, so get creative.
If you don’t have such quality content yet. Create something attractive to promote your own products or services. It could be an e-book, a guidebook or a Checklist…
Do you really want to help your potential customers?
For you, what is the most important thing? Do you want customers to find the right product or solution for them, even if it’s not yours? Want to see satisfied customers? Are you interested in solutions to customer problems? And ready to advise and help them whenever possible?
Do you have a great marketing team?
Can the business’s Marketing team create “leads”, Landing Pages, Blog posts or Emails to support purchases, providing detailed information obtained from the sales team? Do they have expertise in Inbound Marketing or can the business organize training sessions to help them understand the change in approach?
If the answers are mostly “yes,” then you’re ready to get started. And even if it’s “no”, with a few adjustments, you can still launch an Inbound Marketing campaign.
Sometimes, you have implemented a very methodical Inbound Marketing campaign but cannot attract the number of potential customers as expected. If that happens, you can return to the methods used before. Or learn about your shortcomings and relaunch the campaign in a different way.
3. How to create an effective Inbound Marketing campaign?
To create an effective Inbound Marketing campaign, you need to consider taking the following important steps:
3.1. Step 1: Determine the audience of the Inbound Marketing campaign
Before conducting a marketing campaign for the entire business or specific product/service, determining the target customer is the most basic step. That’s the difference between communicating a general, unstable message and running a methodical and truly resonant campaign. Start by developing a profile of your target audience that includes the following components:
- Demographic
- Mentality
- Behavior
- Economic, cultural and social characteristics
- Current awareness of the company and products
- ….
3.2. Step 2: Determine benchmarks and set campaign goals
You need to clearly understand the current position and situation of your business to set appropriate goals. Before launching a campaign, consider current traffic to the Web site, leads, and customers generated by similar campaigns in the past. You can use them to benchmark and set goals for this campaign.
When setting goals for your Inbound Marketing campaign, there are two things you need to pay attention to: “increase customer awareness of the brand” and “increase revenue”. One method that can help you do this is “SMART GOALS”.
Identifying goals based on SMART GOALS, you can clarify your goals:
- Specific (specific, clear): Determine what you want?
- Measurable (measurable): Choose a specific number to measure what you want.
- Achievable: Is your job or desire feasible?
- Realistic: Does this match the actual situation?
- Timebound (term): How long is the completion time of this project or campaign?
With SMART GOALS, you will have a more comprehensive view of your campaign. From there, it can be changed and adjusted appropriately to suit the market and company.
In addition, you can also see more about Digital Marketing documents for small and medium businesses.
3.3. Step 3: Choose keywords and optimize search
Search optimization is a necessary part of an Inbound Marketing campaign. These are the priority words in the title and throughout the content. The goal here is not keyword stuffing but rather consistency in terms used to optimize for search.
3.4. Step 4: Create a tracking URL
When implementing an Inbound Marketing campaign, you’ll want to measure everything to see how each element of the campaign contributed to the end goal. To do this consistently, you’ll need to create a tracking URL to use in your campaigns.
3.5. Step 5: Create “lead bait” and Landing Pages
Once you know all the fundamentals of a Marketing campaign, you need to create engaging content to attract potential customers and Landing Pages. The goal is to convert those visitors into real customers. Make sure your Landing Page’s key elements, like the headline and Meta tags, include the keywords you’ve decided to optimize for.
3.6. Step 6: Choose the right marketing channel for the campaign
Send an Email
Once you have a list of contacts who might be interested in the content, feature it in your newsletter or send it to them privately. Include social sharing buttons in the Email, and be sure to include your tracking URL when you link to the report.
Write related Blog articles
Blogs are a great, search-friendly way to attract people to your appeal. Part of the offer can be reused as a Blog post and linked to the Landing Page. This is to create comprehensive content or write about similar topics to create interest in the field.
Share content on Social Media
Schedule ongoing Social content about your offer throughout the duration of the campaign. Don’t just post the same content every day. Instead, mix it up and see which one converts the best.
Consider paid search and other channels
Other channels can also be part of an Inbound Marketing campaign. Just make sure you track them all together to see how each channel contributes to the campaign.
3.7. Step 7: Nurture leads
An Inbound Marketing campaign will not end as soon as you collect a large number of potential customers thanks to “lead bait” and Landing Page. To keep leads converting, attach a lead nurturing campaign or a related follow-up Email to the offer. Every Email should direct the prospect to the next step in their decision process.
3.8. Step 8: Monitor and measure results
Once your marketing campaign is launched, go back to review and compare its effectiveness against your original goals. Monitoring and measurement need to be done regularly. This is to evaluate and analyze whether you have implemented the campaign well or not? And what adjustments need to be made to improve results?
4. Some tools to support Inbound Marketing campaigns
To create a “good” Inbound Marketing campaign and receive a large number of potential customers. You will need some of the following tools to support implementation and control of Inbound Marketing activities:
4.1. HubSpot – Marketing Automation
With the popularity of Inbound Marketing initiated by HubSpot, it is no surprise that they claim to be the top marketing automation platform. HubSpot is used by many businesses to build Inbound Marketing. It includes tools for creating, optimizing, and promoting content, building lead generation funnels, automating lead nurturing, and reporting on performance. Hubspot – Marketing Automation allows users to automate their Inbound Marketing campaigns effectively. From there, save time and personnel to focus on other essential goals. And importantly, you can use this tool completely free.
4.2. HubSpot CRM – Relationship Management
CRM tools provide a way to manage your relationships with visitors and prospects, recording every interaction you’ve ever had with you, your company, and the Web. After all, lead generation is only half the challenge of Inbound Marketing. And tools like HubSpot let you understand those leads. Include their likes, dislikes, challenges and passions to reach out at the perfect time.
4.3. GatherContent – Content management
From Blog posts to eBooks, Web site posts to Podcasts, content is the engine that drives Inbound Marketing. In the early days, it was easy to keep track of your content. But when the campaign is expanded, reaching customers on many new channels, the level of dependence, deadlines and approvals will increase.
The GatherContent application is a way to manage and organize Content Marketing in a streamlined and effective way. This is done by applying repeatable processes and intuitive workflows to turn projects into slick and complete campaigns.
4.4. Beacon – Exterior design
Almost every user loves in-depth eGuides or free eBooks. But not every business has the time and resources to produce professionally designed content. That’s why Beacon appeared. It is a dedicated eGuide design tool, providing beautiful layouts, images and typography. With just one click, you can import an eGuide draft or a series of Blog posts and turn it into a finished product.
4.5. Unbounce – Landing Pages
Landing Pages are the “powerful arm” of Inbound Marketing. This is where visitors turn into leads and can become loyal brand evangelists.
Unbounce provides a quick and effective way to build, optimize and track your Landing Pages. It also offers several optimized landing page templates and coding-free design flexibility. This helps you easily create beautiful Landing Pages that optimally support your campaign.
4.6. Wistia – Video Marketing
Video Marketing is exploding and if you’re on the trend, Wistia is a great tool. It is a good Video hosting platform, full of utilities and analytics focused on Inbound Marketing.
From advanced engagement statistics to content and API testing, Wistia is a great tool for marketers looking to use Video to enhance customer-focused content marketing based on data.
4.7. HubSpot Sales – Email production capabilities
Email can consume a lot of your time. Especially when you use Email to take care of potential customers, arrange meetings or send product demos in advance… That’s why tools like HubSpot Sale were born. It allows you to quickly personalize Emails, see when customers open Emails and attachments, or schedule meetings with the click of a button. It’s also great for integrating Direct Marketing via Email into your CRM and the rest of your tool package.
4.8. UberConference – Interviews and meetings
Talking to real-life customers is an essential part of Inbound Marketing. UberConference provides a quick and easy way to communicate via phone or video call with customers anywhere. Best of all, it’s packed with convenient marketing-focused tools, including call recording and message transcription.
4.9. Ahrefs – Search engine analysis
Organic Search is the silent work of Inbound Marketing, building slowly but surely over time. Culminating in a predictable flow of qualified leads each month. Ahrefs offers a whole host of search-focused tools, including keyword analysis and mandatory backlinking functionality. Along with that are some innovative content analysis features. If you want to bring a data-driven strategy to your content creation, you’ll need a tool like Ahrefs.
4.10. Google Analytics – Website Analysis
Using Google Analytics (GA) to track website performance will surprise you by what it brings. Google Analytics can become your secret weapon. It provides insights into the performance of your campaigns and customers. Google Analytics will bring great benefits that you can hardly get from a free tool.
To carry out an effective Inbound Marketing campaign, you need to thoroughly understand the steps and be able to combine it with some support tools. This will help increase the effectiveness of the campaign, and capture customers to create more potential customers, which is the perfect piece for the process of running Google ads.
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