The standard “inbound marketing” definition used by most companies in this sector is:

the creation of valuable and insightful content for prospective customers which is easy for them to find when they are looking for information on your products and services

What is content?

Content can be many things – it can be text, graphical or image based, audio, video or a combination of one, some, or all.

Most content is written and the most popular and successful written content includes articles, blogs, case studies, white papers, press releases, and more.

Inbound marketing (sometimes known as indirect marketing) is primarily web-based – your content is mainly hosted on your website but we can also distribute it via social media, outbound email marketing, email newsletters, and 3^rd party websites.

The difference between outbound and inbound marketing is who makes the first move.

With outbound marketing, you initiate the contact with the client.

Standard outbound marketing techniques, sometimes referred to as direct marketing, include email marketing, telephone marketing, and direct mail marketing.

More Than Words offers direct marketing services – please click here for our sister website.

It’s the other way around with inbound marketing meaning that you have to wait for them to come to you instead.

One important concept which applies to both inbound marketing and outbound marketing is the buying journey.

How does inbound marketing work?

Before a consumer or a decision maker for a business, school, or public sector organisation, their journey might look something like this:

• awareness – they may be aware that there is an issue they’re unable to resolve which costs them money and/or prevents them from exploiting an opportunity. At this stage, they start searching the internet to find if other people or companies have this issue and how they resolved it.
• consideration – following their initial research, they may have discovered four or five different solutions open to them and the buyer then starts to investigate each solution in turn to discover which is most suitable for them.
• decision – they will have decided on one or two solutions they wish to pursue and they’re now ready to engage with potential suppliers with a view to making a purchase.

With inbound marketing, you create the content which the prospective customer reads at all points of their buying journey.

Underpinning the inbound marketing buying journey is the concept of “marketing touches” – in other words, exposure to your content.

The content your future clients are exposed to could either be on your website, on an email newsletter or email marketing campaign, social media, 3^rd party websites, telephone marketing campaigns or more.

Many marketing experts contend that it can take up to 13 exposures to your company’s content before a client:

• has enough knowledge about the products and services they need to be confident enough to speak with a sales rep and
• considers your products and services as suitable and your company as capable of successfully delivering the solution they’re seeking.

With inbound marketing, each exposure to your content is an opportunity to interact with your future client.

You should invite them to join your email newsletter or follow you on social media.

By doing so, your company will remain visible to them during the buying journey and each email newsletter or social media post is an additional “marketing touch” taking them closer to the point of making an enquiry.

Both have their place in a company’s approach to the marketplace.

So much so that there are two distinct divisions to More Than Words – this is our inbound marketing site but we have a substantial team of outbound marketing experts whose services you can find out more about here.

Outbound marketing requires constant investment but the returns on the investment you make are generally very high (up to 4,200% with email marketing).

Email marketing, telemarketing, and postal marketing are very much sales-driven. Its goal is to catch people either at the decision phase or towards the end of the consideration phase.

Conducted within a short time window of sometimes a few hours or at most a month, multiple contacts are made with the decision maker to convince them about:

• the efficacy of the products and services they’re being offered,
• the value those products and services will deliver to them, and
• the credibility and the experience of the company offering the products and services.

Outbound marketing takes a fraction of the time to produce leads and sales compared to inbound marketing.

However, more and more companies are diverting greater proportions of their marketing budgets to inbound marketing despite the fact that it can take a year or more for a website visitor to become a client depending on the products and services you sell.

Why is that?

Inbound marketing delivers stronger leads than outbound marketing – the decision makers you’re trying to sell to have taken significant time already before they contact you to understand your products and services and the benefits they bring.

With outbound marketing, educating the customer is far more intense and done over a shorter time.

It’s harder for your sales staff to sell to a decision maker wary of committing to buying from a new supplier than it is to someone who has done due diligence through repeated exposure to your valuable content.

As the amount of content you create and distribute grows, so does the authority, credibility, and relevance that Google ascribes to your website.

In other words, the more high-quality SEO content you’ve got on your website and/or a 3^rd party website, the higher on Google’s search engine ranking pages your website finishes.

More visitors equals more high quality leads.

Unlike outbound marketing which needs constant investment, you can pause investment in inbound marketing occasionally once the amount of content on your site and around the internet has reached a critical mass.

If you stop spending money, the high-quality traffic to your website which results in a stream of constant high-quality leads doesn’t stop overnight.

The effects sometimes persist for months or years because of Google’s elevated search engine rankings.

Once critical mass has been reached, high-quality leads just keep appearing in your inbox. Your telephone will still continue to ring with people making enquiries.

For the long-term future, it’s much easier to sell a business whose website constantly attracts high-quality leads for a higher price and in a quicker time. In some cases, your website may actually be more valuable than your company.

More Than Words uses both inbound and outbound marketing to promote our services – it gives us much greater control over the number and quality of leads we generate as a company.

We would strongly recommend to all clients that they practice both types of marketing and we’d appreciate the opportunity to speak with you about working with your company.

An inbound marketing strategy covers:

• what type of content you’ll create and
• how you make sure that your future customers have got the best possible chance of seeing that content.

To be successful, your inbound content has to be of the highest quality and SEO-optimised.

Even better, it has to answer directly the questions that future clients have about your products and services.

Consumers and decision makers within businesses, schools, and the public sector search for the information they want online before they contact a professional for help.

Your content needs to reflect the questions your target audiences are actually asking Google.

For example, let’s say that you run an employment law practice.

While finishing near the top of Google for “employment law” is a good thing, finishing at the top of Google is even better for the issues on employment law clients are actually searching for.

For example, dismissing staff members is one of the hardest and most legally contestable actions an employer can take.

If, when looking for information on how to dismiss staff members, an employer found actionable, high-quality advice on your website on actual search terms like “how to sack an employee”, “can I sack an employee within 2 years?”, and “can I sack an employee for poor performance?”, this would be of great benefit to your practice.

Why? First, by answering the prospective client’s question in a well-written, empathic, and professional article, you have demonstrated your expertise.

Your contact details are also on the page your client is reading so we can use this visit as an opportunity to encourage them to contact you straight away, to sign up to your email newsletter, or to follow you on social media.

Second, finishing top of Google for “employment law” hasn’t made you more visible to someone seeking specific information or help.

However, by investing in content like “can I sack an employee on sick leave?”, your practice has been seen by someone who may be in need of a service you can charge for.

Now we have the content, we need to make it easy to find.

Creating a library of high-quality, SEO-optimised, plain English articles on your website will mean that it finishes higher on Google’s search engine results page. The effect is cumulative meaning that the more content you upload, the higher your website and every page on it will incrementally rank.

Getting more people with questions you can assist with and problems you can solve to your website is the core aim of inbound marketing. When they’re on your website, we can invite them to get in touch with you.

Second, the value of email newsletters is greatly undervalued. Distribute your new content to your existing client and prospect databases with an email newsletter. Ask us about managed email marketing campaigns if you want to distribute your content by email even further.

Third, regularly linking to high quality content from your social media activity generates additional inbound traffic and increases the likelihood that your followers will share your content with their followers.

And last, which 3^rd party websites and platforms do your target audiences regularly consult and trust? We negotiate the posting of content on these websites and platforms for you so that you’re seen by the widest possible audience in an environment they trust.

Better still, placement on 3^rd party websites and platforms is always accompanied by a link back to your website which increases its perceived value to Google.

This is inbound marketing and how it works – and, as consumers and business decision makers consult the internet even more, it’s important to invest in content to make sure that it’s your website which is seen and not your competitors’.