Your growth marketing consultant told you that it was possible to generate leads with inbound marketing to diversify your strategy and get more leads. Ok, bank! But what is it, then? Is this anglicism the new miracle recipe to increase the organic traffic of your website? At a time when the world is awash in television commercials, radio spots, direct mail, having a differentiating commercial strategy becomes essential. For this, there is a more profitable way to attract customers to you, rather than running after them. What are the steps of inbound marketing? How do you apply them to your business? Follow the leader!
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing
First, let’s go over the basics. By definition, inbound marketing (or incoming marketing) is opposed to outbound marketing. The latter solicits people who have not asked for anything to try to sell them services or products using cold calls, advertisements, flyers, etc. Admittedly, this type of technique is slightly intrusive. Unless you have an unlimited advertising budget, you will quickly realize that as soon as the campaign stops, you will have no more traffic, and therefore no more leads.
The benefits of inbound marketing
Conversely, inbound marketing is based on a targeted content creation strategy, also called content marketing, which makes it possible to reach the right customers, in the right place, at the right time. Prospects come to you, not the other way around. In addition, you enhance your brand image by offering content with high added value, and free on top of that!
Far from mass prospecting, inbound marketing makes it possible to reach a very specific audience. The Internet user’s purchasing process is then facilitated, because he has the feeling of controlling his thinking before taking out his credit card. He doesn’t feel oppressed like he can with traditional trading techniques.
You will find many advantages to this strategy:
- automating the lead acquisition and sales cycle;
- ultra-qualified contacts;
- a good ROI (return on investment);
- loyal customers who become ambassadors for your company;
- a sustainable digital strategy;
- etc.
So, now that you have understood the principle, you must be wondering how to concretely generate leads with inbound marketing? How do you implement an effective tactic to get hot contacts to come to you on their own initiative? Let’s see together the 4 basic rules.
The 4 basic rules for generating leads with inbound marketing
1. Define your buyer persona
A buyer persona or avatar is your ideal customer, your target, that is to say the person who will buy your products or services. Inbound marketing consists of meeting the expectations of the Internet user, but you still have to know who you want to reach! Precisely defining one or more buyer profiles will condition the effectiveness of your strategy.
A market study will be wise to identify who will be your future customers, how to address them, what content to offer them, etc. This is a step that should not be overlooked. Give your target a first name, an age, a socio-professional category. Also find out what her problems are and why she needs your products or services. What type of media does she consume? What are his barriers to buying?
2. Create quality content to attract visitors to your site
Once you have defined your buyer persona, all you have to do is create quality content that addresses its various issues. Identify what your avatar is looking for and provide a solution.
Consistency, regularity and SEO are the key words of a successful inbound marketing strategy. Indeed, for your prospects to come to you, they must find you easily! Bet everything on natural referencing and a relevant editorial planning in order to attract a large number of visitors to your website.
Whether in optimized blog posts, in videos, in a podcast or on social networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.), always remember to bring maximum value to your target audience so that they consider you an expert in the field. This is where the loyalty of your future customers begins. Keep in mind that you are what you post, so bad content assumes that your products or services are too.
However, don’t overlook the impact SEA can have on your traffic. It is sometimes interesting to complete your strategy with measured outbound marketing and Google Ads to boost your SEO in its early stages.
3. Convert readers into leads with digital marketing
Congratulations, the organic traffic of your website is clearly increasing! Now is the time to convert those visitors into leads, otherwise everything you’ve built so far will be for naught. A lead is a prospect who has shown interest in your business. He has authorized you to collect his personal information (surname, first name, email, telephone number, etc.). You will be able to establish a relationship of trust and move forward in the conversion funnel.
Collecting your contact’s email address will be central to your marketing strategy. To encourage him to communicate it to you, you will have to offer him a counterpart. For example, you can give them access to premium content in exchange for this data. The lead magnet, or “prospect magnet”, can be a white paper, a webinar, a series of exclusive videos, etc.
To collect this information, you just need to set up copywritten CTAs (call-to-action) that encourage the reader to click to receive their gift. He will then be directed to a landing page where a form will have to be completed to recover the precious sesame.
4. Turn leads into customers to grow your business
Your email list is growing visibly, it’s great! Now, how do you turn those leads into customers? Your contacts begin to trust you, you are no longer a stranger to them. You can now establish your expertise thanks to lead nurturing, which consists of maintaining, or strengthening, a relationship with prospects who are not yet mature enough for a sales action. The goal is to stay in their minds. Thus, when they are in a buying dynamic, they will think of you first, because you helped them before you wanted to sell them something.
Do you know the principle of reciprocity? When we are offered something, we feel indebted. For example, you are passing through Paris and a friend offers to host you. A few weeks later, it is the same person’s turn to pass through your city. He asks you if he can stay with you for a few days. Hard to refuse! So, you return the favor, by reciprocity. Here you have offered a free resource on a silver platter, it will be more natural for your potential customer to thank you by buying your product or service. No, cheese tastings in supermarkets are not there for your taste pleasure alone. 😉
To get your prospects to move forward in your sales funnel, you will be able to set up emailing campaigns, or newsletters. It’s not about flooding their inbox with ads, but about continuing to prove your worth until your lead is hot enough to make a purchase. To have a good opening rate and clicks, you can also use the services of professional ebook writers.
Content marketing strategy and lead generation: what to remember
If you had to remember only one word from this article, it would be: VALUE! Inbound marketing is based above all on the relationship of trust that you will create with your future client and the value that you will bring to them. You must put people at the heart of your digital strategy for it to be beneficial in the long term. Helping is the new way to sell! Solving the problems of your leads is the best way to turn them into loyal ambassadors for your brand.
Generating leads with inbound marketing is undoubtedly more profitable and sustainable than traditional marketing, but the two approaches are completely complementary. Remember that the creation of content and an effective SEO strategy will make it possible to gain visibility and set up prospecting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week thanks to automation tools. All you have to do is contact the SEO web editors of it to appear in the first results of Google and see your organic traffic soar!
