What is Inbound Marketing?

If marketing is the process of promoting what you sell, what is inbound marketing? And why should you care?

Let’s answer that second question about why you should care first …

Inbound marketing is 10 times more effective for lead conversion than more traditional outbound marketing strategies.

And if that’s not good enough on its own …

Inbound leads cost 61% less on average than outbound leads.

Additionally, while costing less …

Inbound practices produce 54% more leads than traditional outbound practices.

These statistics were compiled by Invesp and are based on studies done by multiple independent sources.

So, clearly, inbound marketing works. And it works really well.

But what is it, exactly?

Inbound Marketing Attracts and Engages Customers

Like a giant magnet, inbound marketing pulls customers in and helps them find your products and services.

Inbound marketing focuses on “showing up" with valuable content and experiences in all the places where a customer might be looking online. Some examples include:

• Search engines
• Blogs
• Social media
• Podcasts
• Webinars
• YouTube

Again, this is content that your audience wants and is searching for. Inbound marketing is the process of producing it and making it easy for them to find.

This is in contrast with traditional outbound practices that disrupt or interrupt your audience with content that they don’t always want.

Outbound marketing would be things like cold calls, cold emails, direct mail, print ads, radio or tv ads, etc.

Outcomes Achieved with Inbound Marketing

In addition to getting more leads that cost less, here are some of the other outcomes companies can achieve with inbound marketing:

• Lower overall marketing costs
• Better overall company growth
• Improved customer relationships
• Stronger company brand
• Unfair competitive advantage

While Powerful, Inbound Marketing has its Challenges

The power and strength of inbound marketing lies in the content that’s doing the work of attracting and engaging your audience. And at the same time, that content is one of the biggest challenges, too.

The content you produce has to be high quality if you want to stand out.

You also need to produce new content regularly.

And, because it’s based on attracting customers TO you, inbound marketing can take time to gain momentum.

These challenges can be overcome with good planning. But you do need to keep them in mind as you put inbound marketing to work for you.

Putting Inbound Marketing to Work for You

If you’re new to inbound marketing, or if you need to change what you’re currently doing with inbound marketing in order to get better results, it can be advantageous to get some expert advice and direction.

And we’re here for you if you need that help!

WorldLight Media started as a web design firm in 2005, and we evolved in 2013 into a full-service Branding and Digital Marketing firm to better serve companies like you. Inbound marketing is one of our specialties … and one of our passions.

So we invite you to get in touch with our team and request a meeting so we can get to know more about your business goals. We’d love to explore just how inbound marketing might fit your company and hopefully give you a clear vision of how to proceed.

Simply use our convenient online form here to contact our team and start the conversation.