The 4 phases of Inbound
The Inbound method is the best way to transform perfect strangers into clients and loyal promoters of your brand. Now we will explain how.
#1
ATTRACTING RELEVANT VISITORS
The Inbound method aims to attract all users who are already looking for your company and/or the products and services you are offering, therefore channeling a traffic of people to your website that have a higher probability of becoming contacts, and ultimately, satisfied clients.
How can you attract this type of relevant traffic for sale?
By working on channels and forms of content such as:
- A Blog: the ideal place to create informative, high-quality forms of content, which provide a response to the questions of your buyer and serve for you to position yourself as an expert in your field, thanks to a tailored content marketing strategy.
- SEO & Keywords: when the process of shopping begins online, you cannot afford to lose the opportunity of being easily found directly on the search engines thanks to an optimized SEO website.
- Social media: with social networking you will not only be able to create but, above all, promote your best content, make yourself known and extend your online presence.
#2
CONVERT YOUR VISITORS INTO LEADS
Once you have attracted visitors through a strategy of personalized content, the moment has come to transform them in to contacts who will be registered in an automated manner and highlighted in your Marketing & Sales database.
How to do this? Pushing your visitors to leave their contact information, (starting with the essential email address and name), thanks to:
- Contact Form: develope and insert wisely into your content to encourage users to leave their contact information, which is vital for trade, in exchange for valuable content.
- CTA: Call-to-actions are links or buttons that encourage the visitor to take action, such as signing up for an event, downloading an e-book or participating in a webinar.
- Landing page: this involves pages of your site which the CTA will redirect visitors to and that contain a release form for personal information/details.
#3
CLOSE THE SALE
Not all contacts (leads) generated in the previous stage will necessarily transform into clients. Closing the sale is the most delicate stage in the whole process as it passes through the hands of Inbound now but must have marketing that can sustain it through:
- CRM: a system of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) allows you to record all information related to a single contact, from the web pages visited to the resources requested, for continuous support which is deeply tailored towards your specific marketing and sales strategy.
- E-Mail: if not all of the leads are potential clients at first, it is worth “warming them up” by keeping contact with targeted forms of communication and ad-hoc to nourish their relationship with the brand (lead-nurturing).
#4
DELIGHT YOUR CLIENT TO MAKE HIM/HER YOUR PROMOTER
From the moment a contact becomes a client, the Inbound method aims at creating loyalty, turning clients into prime promoters of your brand. Workflows: this involves a series of Marketing Automation moves which allow you to automate and personalize the process of interactions with your contacts, for a targeted move which does not sacrifice productivity.
- Surveys: recognizing the feedback on behalf of your clients is fundamental in order to always remain updated on what they genuinely need.
- Smart Content: thanks to a system of marketing automation, it is possible to show your prospective buyer strongly personalized/targeted contents based on what stage they find themselves in the buying process.
- Monitoring conversations on social media: always staying updated on what is said online; conversations, comments and likes. This will help you with the creation and promotion of content ad-hoc.
The target: knowing how to define your prospective buyer
Every move in marketing, every interaction, every message, every bit of content created and promoted cannot do without deep understanding of your target and who you are profiling.
The Prospective Buyer is a semi-fictitious representation of your ideal client, based on research of the market and information deriving from current clients.
From demographic characteristics, to codes of conduct, to intrinsic motivations, all the way to personal challenges, an in-depth description of your prospective buyer will guide your enterprise in every stage of development and in every department.
The purpose? Having a clear idea of the“character”we wish to attract using our strategy of marketing, sales and product.
The purchase process in the Inbound: the Buyer’s Journey
The Buyer’s Journey is the process by which customers become aware of the existence of a product or service, evaluate it and finally decide to buy it.
The process consists of 3 main phases:
- Awareness: the awareness of the existence of a problem, a need or an opportunity.
- Consideration: the potential client defines the fundamental features of the problem and looks for the options to solve it.
- Decision: the buyer chooses which of the alternatives available will be the final solution to his problem.
Thanks to the Inbound methodology and ad hoc tools, you will always know at which stage each buyer belongs to interact in an optimized way and accompany it along the sales funnel.
