Inbound marketing draws customers to you via content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media marketing and is distinct from paid advertising. What is the state of inbound marketing and how important is it to a successful online business strategy?

Inbound Marketing Campaigns

Implementing paid display advertisements and search engine marketing campaigns can be a powerful boost to your success online, these are just parts of a multi-faceted approach that the successful online business will engage in. Content marketing, SEO and Social Media marketing are less-invasive methods of building awareness with potential clients, and oftentimes even more effective than paid advertisements.

Inbound marketing campaigns offer higher returns on investment and are more effective than traditional paid marketing campaigns. The term itself was coined by HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan, and HubSpot offers a wealth of useful statistics on inbound marketing, as well as publishing a yearly State of Inbound report. We can glean some useful information from the 2016 report that was released in September to help justify the need for investment in inbound marketing.

Perhaps the most impressive statistic found in the report is that inbound organizations are 4x as likely to be effective, and inbound marketers are more satisfied with their business strategic playbook. With 65% of top marketers stating that generating traffic and leads is the top marketing challenge for them, effectiveness and satisfaction is critical in choosing where to invest your time and money, and inbound marketing is a strategy that shines. Proving ROI came out as the second biggest marketing challenge, so it’s great that inbound marketing campaigns can offer deep insight into what customers are looking for and where they are coming from. Each individual post can be tracked and costs and conversions can be easily calculated and applied.

Running a Successful Inbound Marketing Campaign

Successful inbound marketing campaigns provide useful information to potential clients in an engaging way. By doing so, the successful marketer helps to build trust and improve the experience that customers have with your organization. It’s no surprise that according to HubSpot’s 2016 report shows that the two most over-rated marketing tactics are traditional paid advertising (print/outdoor) followed by online paid advertising. These are obviously less intimate, and requires potential clients to first visit your site and then be convinced that you are offering something of value to them.

It can be a daunting task to convince your non-marketing superiors to invest in inbound marketing. It is both time consuming and requires considerable maintenance. However, there are a few steps you can take to sell the importance of inbound marketing successfully. First, provide stats. The yearly State of Inbound reports are a treasure trove of statistics underscoring the effectiveness of inbound marketing. Once you have that, you can start breaking down the costs of your campaigns and plan out your strategies. Are you going to do it yourself, and allocate time and resources to do so, or are you going to outsource it to a company like Husaria Marketing? What kinds of KPI are you going to set? What do you expect from your team in terms of blog posts, social media posts, white papers and more per month? Preparation will go a long way to ensuring success in executing an inbound marketing campaign.