Submitted by webmaster on November 5, 2015

If you have been reading our articles since our relaunch or have given us the honor of being one of our clients then you probably have heard the term as well.  While the phrase "inbound marketing" itself was probably first used by the Hubspot executives.  It is not a totally new practice or marketing strategy.  The process works really nicely and has positive effects on your SEO strategies as well.

Even after hearing how we use Inbound marketing to get results for your site, you may still have a couple of questions about it and may wonder about some of the requests we make to ensure your campaign is successful may confuse you or your SEO team.  That is why we wanted to post this article to help those who may still need a bit more information in order to gain clarity on what Inbound Marketing will be doing for their website traffic.

Parts to a Successful Inbound Marketing Campaign

The most fundamental part to Inbound Marketing is to help customers find you exactly when they are looking for your product or service.  In the past, there was a lot of money that was spent by marketing departments to put all of the information about your company out on various channels like newspaper, radio, television, or magazines.  Then usually a team of sales professionals would follow up on that campaign with anybody who may have benefited from the products or services your company has to offer.

Many of these channels are still extremely valuable for businesses for the first-touch marketing campaigns, allowing you to get the word out that your company exists and that you have products and services to offer customers.  What many of these outlets don't offer you is the chance to nurture a relationship with potential customers or clients.  Think about it when a customer or client wants to know more about your business or a product you offer to go in today's world?

The biggest parts of an inbound marketing campaign serve to get information into the view of prospects in order to help them make their purchase decision.  Content, promotion, personalization, social media, and full integration of all of these components leads to a more powerful marketing machine.  Learning how to leverage that machine will increase your businesses revenue and sales.

One Giant Leap for Inbound Marketing

There are four steps you need to take for your inbound marketing campaign.  The first is Attraction, you will want to bring the right people to your website to read the content you have available and filter out the wrong type of traffic for your business.  Making sure that you have enough of the right type of traffic is essential to an inbound marketing campaign.

The next phase of an Inbound Marketing campaign is Conversions, when you finally have the right audience coming to your site and they find your content appealing, then they will move from the "visitor" stage of the relationship and into the lead stage of the relationship.  This is where often times a sales professional or targeted email can reach out to a lead to continue the process.  

Once the Sales professional has reached out to the lead and built enough trust/demand in the lead the lead will then move into the close phase of the relationship, meaning this is where they finally make a purchase.  From here they move from just being a lead and into a full-blown customer.  However, you work really is just beginning when it comes to a long-term relationship with this customer and will mark an important step towards ensuring brand loyalty and repeat purchases.

The final step in the cycle is the customer's delight.  Far too many customers fall through the cracks as companies skate by on doing just the bare minimum that they think is required to meet their product or service obligations.  Many customers have become accustomed to the bare minimum and they think a whole lot of nothing special is on the way.  Your goal here is to not be just like the average company but to excel and do everything possible to impress and meet your customers' needs.  Once you have gotten used to doing this with every customer that is possible, you will start seeing returns not only with customers you have relationships with but with individuals who have relationships with your customers.  In a sense, if you do a good job in this stage your customers become an extension of your inbound marketing campaign.

These are the basics that make up the lifecycle of an inbound marketing campaign.  Next, we can talk about how these components can come together and work for you.  If you are already interested and can't wait for the next article in the series, then contact us to learn more about how we can help today.