By the suggestion of Sonja and Aaron Dyess of Captevrix, I just earned my Inbound Marketing certification through Hubspot’s free certification program. Up to that point, I’d never even heard of Inbound Marketing before. Through the training, I’ve realized the potential power behind using inbound marketing versus other marketing methods.
So what is inbound marketing?
If you, like me, have never heard of inbound marketing before, here’s a quick explanation. Instead of pushing a brand in front of potential customers, using ads, and buying email lists, Inbound marketing draws potential customers to you. How do you do this?
First, through creating and distributing awesome, informational content that your customers want and are searching for. By using this method, you’re drawing the right people to your website, and offering them great content, giving you credibility, and avoiding become just another ad or piece of spam. This content can come in a variety of forms. * Blog posts * Infographics * eBooks * Whitepapers * How-to videos * Checklists
Second, an inbound marketer continues to follow and delight prospects through the entire journey, from their first visit, to even after they become customers. They use the “inbound methodology” to attract the perfect strangers, convert these visitors to leads, customers, and finally to promoters of your product/brand. The Inbound Methodology has four stages:
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Attract: Attract strangers to your website by offering great content and distributing it through social media. Centering this content around focused keywords will help search engines find your content, and searchers find what they are searching for.
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Convert: The goal then is to convert these visitors into leads. At the end of a blog post, for example, you can link to an offer for a free eBook download, if the visitor fills out a form with their contact information. The new lead gets free, great content, and you have a potential contact that came to you first.
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Close: With personalized, targeting emails and other communication, you can guide leads along the journey to becoming customers. Free trials/consultations, and special offers can be used in this stage to close leads into customers.
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Delight: Once a person becomes a customer, you’re not done! Offering content that delights current customers can turn them into promoters, who will be free, credible advertising for you, attracting more strangers, and beginning the cycle once again.
Want more?
Want to learn more about Inbound Marketing? Hubspot Academy offers a free inbound certification program. The program consists of 12 video classes, covering many of the topics I listed above. The videos are informational, and entertaining to watch as well. To get certified, watch the videos, and then take the online test.
Plus, you get a fun badge you can add to your LinkedIn profile, website, or share on social media. Bragging rights included. Enjoy!