Top Inbound Marketing Companies

Although the purpose of inbound and outbound marketing is the same - growing customer base and generating sales - the approach is different. This difference sets them both apart.

Outbound marketing is the traditional marketing type that involves sending messages to people, hoping to align with their goals and needs. These may include cold calling, email lists, and display ads.

But with the increasing awareness, customers seek ways to block unwanted services and messages through ad-blocking and spam emails.

Therefore, outbound marketing isn’t effective anymore. The failing traditional marketing strategies developed the urge for an impactful solution - inbound marketing.

It aims to understand the customer buying cycle. Brands create content for each stage with hopes of turning visitors into prospects and prospects into customers. Later, these customers can become business promoters through positive word of mouth.

This marketing strategy saves costs and boosts return on investment. Besides, it helps develop a bond with customers, who see you as a credible, trustworthy brand.

When you address customer queries and share meaningful messages, they feel you actually care for them. Consequently, you gain a competitive edge, and they’ll pick you over your competitors anytime.

Speaking of the advantages of inbound marketing, knowing how this effective marketing strategy can help you as a business owner is essential. Some key benefits of inbound marketing are listed below.

Earning Trust and Credibility

When you encourage customers to research and discover your brand organically, you sound much more sensible than an ad screaming, “Buy this before it runs out of stock.”

Further, because around research before purchasing products, inbound marketing can add to their experience. You can create helpful content and include social proof to reduce risks that prospects may associate with your business.

Less Expense

Studies unveil that inbound marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing.

Mass marketing is ineffective is one thing, but it also requires more money and follows up with risks - more reasons to not go for one.

Experts believe traditional marketing is like hitting an arrow in the dark, expecting it to hit the target. Inbound marketing, on the other hand, offers a more targeted and focused approach by reaching customers when they need you.

Consequently, you save money - and time - by not sharing your ads with a broader audience like an unsolicited suggestion.

Quality Leads

You didn’t request anybody to buy from you. Instead, you only helped people genuinely interested in products your brand may offer.

Consequently, you draw in the right traffic and leads. When you take an informed and targeted approach, you attract leads interested in the solutions you offer.

Growth Opportunities

No brand can claim they fully understand their customers. Learning never ends, and the same applies to your brand. Inbound marketing offers a chance to engage with customers through social media.

You get to listen to them, their queries, and the issues. This feedback can help you more than you imagine - so long as you’re willing to improve as a brand.

You can better understand your customer's needs and preferences. As such, you have a chance to upgrade your products and services to serve your customers better.

Inbound Marketing Strategies

There are numerous ways to implement an inbound marketing strategy. But to get it right, you need to have one in place, to begin with.

You must know what your customers want at specific points in their buying cycle. This will help you create relevant content that resonates with their goals and encourages them to move to the next step.

Below, we’ll walk you through different inbound marketing strategies and how they can help you grow your business.

Attraction

Inbound marketing tactics meant to attract your target audience involve creating and developing effective content.

You need to begin by creating the content and publishing it on social media or your website. This may include posts, infographics, blogs, or anything providing value.

For instance, you can include “how-to” guides to share methods to use specific products.

Further, you must include information about how your solutions can solve their problems. Do not forget to add customer testimonials and promotional details as they entice potential buyers.

Digging deeper into the attraction stage, you need to optimize your content by hitting appropriate SEO markers.

This demands you to include specific keywords and phrases that the audience uses to search for related products. You also must include information on how you aim to help your customers.

This will help your content rank on SERPs organically.

Engagement

This stage requires skillful communication because it can make or break your prior efforts.

When engaging with your audience, you must aim to build long-term relationships with them. Consider sharing information on how your business can provide them with the value they seek.

This also requires an effort by your customer service team. They must be trained to handle interested people and buyers like pros.

Besides, their tone shouldn’t sell the product but the solution. This will benefit both the parties: you and your customers.

Your ideal audience gets the value they need, and your business earns new customers.

Delight

Good thing you earned new customers and successfully engaged your target audience. But your efforts do not end here.

After the purchase, you must ensure they are satisfied and happy with your services. This would require you to support them after engagement.

The delighting strategy involves your staff members becoming their trustable advisors, assisting them in hours of need.

For instance, you can incorporate surveys and chatbots to guide and support customers. Plus, collecting feedback can also help your business. However, ensure your chatbots and surveys are well-timed to make the most of this opportunity.

If you’ve recently introduced a new feature or tactic that can be helpful for your customers, you can inform them through chatbots. Further, you can share a satisfaction survey 6 months after they’ve used your product.

This won’t only make them feel valued, but the feedback will help you determine your product and service limitations.

You can also delight your customers through social media listening. This involves supporting them and addressing their queries through social media channels. When you respond to your customers, they’ll feel you care for them. Eventually, they’ll show more loyalty to your brand.

You must handle each inbound strategy like an expert to ensure the best possible outcome.

Your brand website and social media channels are an integral part of your business. But you need a deeper foundation to outpace competitors and earn a name in the evolving digital world.

Marketing agencies understand how to approach customers and follow the best inbound marketing practices. However, you must choose carefully to ensure you invested your money correctly.

Ask About Their Foundational Strategy

An effective inbound marketing strategy is extensive. Therefore, the foundational work requires at least three months before launching the campaign. If a company offers you an overnight plan, their strategy is highly skeptical.

Be wary of firms that provide you with immediate solutions because inbound marketing doesn’t work like that.

Check Their Ability to Create Compelling Content

Content is the driving force of any inbound marketing strategy. It aims to understand your ideal personas to craft suitable content accordingly.

The content must address their needs and solve their pain points for a successful outcome. The better a company understands its audience, the more meaningful content it can produce - be it blog articles or infographics.

What About Their SEO Knowledge?

SEO is a critical part of a successful inbound marketing strategy. Because it helps your prospects and customers discover your brand, choosing a firm with no SEO knowledge is certainly not wise.

An agency could be creating the most valuable content, but if they aren’t hitting the right SEO markers, we’re afraid it won’t work.

Therefore, the best inbound marketing firms understand the role SEO plays in an effective marketing campaign. Not only do they implement the right SEO practices, but they monitor the content and improve it and keep it relevant and fresh.

Do They Understand Customer Voice?

Word of mouth plays a significant role in portraying your image the way you desire. However, it would require the inbound marketing company to understand the voice of customers.

Because individuals talk about their experiences on social media, a marketing agency must understand the importance of meaningful communication with customers. This will help you execute a successful voice of customer feedback strategy.

Social Media Knowledge

Creating content is not all. An experienced marketing agency knows how to position content in social media for high engagement. Besides, they must know how to communicate with your personas for the best results.

This would require them to have an in-depth understanding of how social media works. An inexperienced firm can cost you a reputation at this point. So, choose wisely!

While the right inbound marketing agency can take your business to new heights, choosing wrong can hurt your brand. Therefore, make sure you avoid these mistakes for a meaningful outcome.

• Choosing a company that doesn’t practice what it preaches. Does the company actively create content and blogs and use social media for engagement? If so, do not hesitate to ask them about the results. This will give you an insight into what you can expect from their services.

- Not checking their history. Run a quick history check to see how they’ve served their clients in the past. A reputable firm proudly displays its reviews and ratings on its official website. You can also reach out to their past customers to learn about their experiences.

- Hiring an agency that lacks problem-solving skills. Despite how knowledgeable and skillful a company is, it might run into problems when running a marketing campaign. If you choose a firm with strong problem-solving skills, it’ll tackle the problems like a pro.

Gone are the days when you could attract your target audience by shoving your products into their faces through random ads and bombarding their inboxes. A click of a button is all it takes to spam annoying messages or block you.

Inbound marketing offers a strategic way to help customers and attract them to your brand. You only need to offer them value, and they’ll be naturally convinced to purchase.

Xpeer connects you to skillful marketing agencies who know how to target the audience and when. This helps you achieve growth-driven results for your brand, and you’ll experience business growth before your competitors.