Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is an increasingly popular approach to gathering and converting leads to sales. It centres around creating online content and experiences and is typically part of a digital marketing strategy that establishes a business’s online presence and authority.

It involves creating content such as blog posts, videos, e-books, newsletters, and white papers, as well as sharing this content on the right platforms.

“You can think of inbound marketing as a magnet that draws prospects to learn about, engage with and, ultimately, buy from your business,” says Adrian Turner, Manager, Demand Generation, BDC. “The ideology behind inbound marketing is like the movie Field of Dreams: ‘If you build it, they will come.’”

Inbound vs. outbound marketing

While outbound marketing is about proactively going after prospects with tactics such as cold calling or buying media ads, inbound marketing focuses on creating content that’s particularly relevant to your business’s ideal customer.

“Inbound marketing attempts to pull customers towards your business. Outbound marketing is more of an effort to push information about your business out into the world without the customization elements,” says Turner.

Inbound marketing is typically more cost-effective than outbound marketing because, once it’s created and disseminated, it can serve as almost passive income stream. You’re not paying salespeople to generate and engage with leads, nor are you funding big media ads or buying and staffing booths at trade shows. When deployed consistently and with search engine optimization (SEO), your online content is working 24/7 to bring in qualified leads.

Inbound marketing examples

High-quality content that resonates with your ideal customers comes in many forms, including:

• blog posts
• social media posts
• videos
• e-books
• white papers
• infographics
• webinars
• podcasts
• quizzes
• email newsletters
• case studies/use cases

Choosing the right content for your audience

How well do you know your ideal customers? Before embarking on an inbound marketing strategy, it’s imperative to understand where your most promising prospects spend time online and on social media, and what type of content they engage with most.

“There are multiple ways to find out what ideal customers want. If you have an email database of leads, you could reach out and ask what they’re interested in. There are also online tools such as Google Trends that you can leverage to look at topics in your industry that are trending up or down,” says Turner.

“Companies are often experts in their field. Write what you know and what your customers care about.”

Ensuring your content is seen

A crucial part of inbound marketing is establishing the infrastructure that ensures it gets to the right people online. SEO is an effective technique to improve your website’s ranking on the results pages of search engines, and it pays to know its current requirements.

“SEO has changed over the years. It used to be about filling pages with key words that rank high. Today, it’s more about understanding what people are looking for and writing content that’s relevant to them. This goes hand in hand with the goals of inbound marketing,” says Turner.

A robust social media presence—on the platforms your ideal customers use—is another important way to ensure your content is widely viewed and shared. To make the most of the content you create, it’s important to cultivate a strong following on at least one platform.

You can also use pay-per-click advertising to direct users who are searching for information related to your business, products and services to your content.

Repurposing your content

It can be a lot of work to create a steady stream of high-quality content that speaks to your customers. Turner recommends making the most of your efforts by repurposing some pieces into multiple forms.

“You can maximize your return on investment (ROI) by turning an e-book or white paper into a series of infographics, social media posts, videos and blog posts in list format,” he says. “The most important aspect of inbound marketing is creating spiderwebs and casting them all over the internet.”

Seeding your content with a call to action (CTA)

One of the basic tenets of inbound and content marketing is to make sure you include an action you want the customer to take next. CTAs are meant to be direct and often come in the form of a digital button, such as “Get started”, “Read more” or “Buy now”.

Whether it’s a white paper or a video, you want your prospective customer to do something to further engage with your business when they’re finished with a piece of content. Ideally, you’ll point them to another one that pushes them further down the sales funnel.

Inbound marketing strategies

Inbound marketing doesn’t end with creating great content and putting it on the internet. There are best practices you can take to ensure it gets in front of the right people.

Personalize your content

You can tailor some or all of your content for different prospects. For example, if a chemical manufacturing company writes a white paper on the best cleaning products for industrial use, they could customize parts of it for different customer segments (automotive, hospitality, agriculture, etc.) and/or regions (Atlantic Canada, Western Canada, etc.).

“The more personalized you can make your content for your customer, the more interesting it is to them and the closer they feel to your business,” said Turner.

If your company does business across Canada or even globally, you can create separate landing pages by region and ensure that the language, the information and the value propositions speak directly to the people who self-select their region on your home page.

Embrace influencers

Turner recommends identifying influencers in your industry and among your target audience to connect and potentially partner with.

“Look for people who are credible in the community, industry or customer segment that you’re targeting and suggest ways to share content. You might ask them to promote your business on their social media platform or write a blog post for their website. There are lots of ways to cross-pollinate with influencers,” he says.

Employ content syndication

When they first began, TV shows Seinfeld and Friends were broadcast only on NBC. Today, their entire catalogue of episodes can be viewed on a number of networks and streaming platforms, increasing their viewers and the number of viewings exponentially.

You can do the same with your content by offering it to relevant outlets that could put your business in front of fresh sets of eyes. Potential syndicated options include:

• industry publications
• industry association websites, newsletters
• LinkedIn
• community newspapers
• reputable social publishing platforms

Use AI

AI technologies can help you be more efficient and targeted in your inbound marketing efforts. The technology can be employed across the entire process, including:

• Content curation: It can sift through large amounts of content to find and recommend articles, videos and posts relevant for your audience. Use it as inspiration to create your own.
• Customer segmentation: AI can analyze customer data to segment audiences based on behaviour, preferences and demographics.
• Automated follow-ups: AI-powered chatbots and email automation can follow up with leads at the right time with the right message, nurturing them through the sales funnel.
• Keyword research: AI tools can analyze search trends and suggest the best keywords to target for improved SEO.
• Performance analysis: AI can track and analyze the performance of marketing campaigns, providing real-time insights and suggestions for improvement.
• Content scheduling and posting: AI tools can schedule and post content at optimal times to maximize engagement.
• Subject line optimization: AI can suggest subject lines that are more likely to be opened based on past performance and recipient behavior. 

What is the inbound marketing funnel?

Turner says there are three stages to the inbound marketing funnel. Your library of content should work together to move prospects from the top to the bottom, at which point they will be most likely to initiate a relationship with your business or make a purchase.

Attract

Knowing your ideal prospects and creating content that speaks directly to them is where inbound marketing begins. Customers may come across your content when doing an internet search, while scrolling social media or when on an industry or community website or social media platform. Ensure every piece of content is crisp and relevant to capture their attention.

Engage

Now that you’ve attracted them to your website or social media page, you’ve got to give them something to engage with. This is likely related content to the first piece they saw, so they can get to know you even better. Make sure that your CTAs are enticing enough to get them to take more action, such as subscribing to your newsletter or moving further down the sales funnel.

Delight

At the bottom of the funnel, they’ve likely engaged with your content at least a few times and they like what they see. The final hurdle is to demonstrate the value-add your company offers. Content that seals the deal include things like a free consulting service, a comparison tool between you and your competitor or a case study.

What are the benefits of inbound marketing for small businesses?

Turner says small businesses have the most to gain from inbound marketing.

“Inbound marketing is a cost-effective approach. It doesn’t have to cost a lot to shoot a quick video about a product or service or put up a post on social media. And the fact that you can repurpose content gives you even more bang for your buck,” he says.

The low cost of inbound marketing also allows you to be experimental in your approach. Turner advises businesses to try new topics and formats and see how they perform against each other.

“Don’t be afraid to try new things,” says Turner. “Maybe your clients aren’t on LinkedIn; they’re on Facebook or TikTok. You won’t really know until you try.”

By developing useful and practical content, inbound marketing draws potential customers who are doing research and engaging with other content online, encouraging them to interact with your business. Interactive participation makes it easier to convert them into paying customers.

Next step

Discover how to assess, optimize and digitize your sales process by downloading BDC’s free guide, Revving up Your Sales.