How to Optimize Inbound Lead Generation Strategies

No one wakes up and decides to buy something. Life is a journey, so are sales and marketing.

People go through a journey to make a purchase. They find a company, get attracted to a brand, understand the product, explore its authenticity, get convinced to buy, and after all that, they decide to make the real purchase.

People seek a solution at each stage of this journey; they consider several points to solve their pain points.

Here, inbound marketing gets into the game and nurtures people with what they are looking for -valuable and solution-oriented content.

This marketing method makes you different. Your customers don’t feel like they’re being sold; the content provided by inbound marketing makes them feel like they are the decision-maker.

 

Let’s shape a basic framework for inbound marketing. Later, this article will dive into the stages of the inbound marketing funnel and best practices to optimize leads.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

In marketing, we are consistently exposed to the methodology of inbound marketing. But, what exactly is this inbound marketing?

 

Inbound marketing is a method of attracting customers to your company by creating valuable content and building meaningful relationships with your customers.

 

It aims to develop a targeted go-to-market strategy to push the potential customers to start a two-way relationship and lead them down the inbound marketing funnel.

How does this work?

A sales process can be completed by educating your customers with valuable content, solving their problems, and leading them to their goals throughout their journey.

 

Inbound marketing basically aims to increase awareness and trust for the company.

Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

When it comes to discussing how marketers generate leads and construct their marketing funnel, some say they follow outbound marketing, while some embrace the method of inbound marketing.

So, whether to go inbound or outbound?

At its simplest, the root of inbound marketing comes from creating valuable content that offers solutions to the problems of potential customers. On the other hand, outbound marketing is another method, seeks to push messages out to prospects.

Therefore, while building meaningful relationships and delivering quality content is at the core of inbound marketing, outbound marketing is developed through proactive, direct contact initiated by you.

 

Inbound marketing includes attracting content such as blog posts, ebooks, guides, and best practices, engaging content lead flows, surveys, and chatbots, and delighting content such as loyalty programs and feedback surveys, all of which provide value.

Outbound marketing, on the other hand, includes cold calling, ads, telemarketing, billboards, newspaper and magazine ads, cold calling, and pop-ups, all of which are costly and decrease ROI.

Inbound Lead Generation

Generating leads can actually be a subject of outbound marketing. However, you can think of inbound marketing as a roundabout way of generating leads.

You do not go to potential customers and pitch your product; on the contrary, you encourage them to come to you by creating high-quality content.

Inbound lead generation starts with formulating an indirect way of generating lead strategy, which consists of creating the content, distributing it to the right channels, and communicating with your audience.

Formulating an inbound lead generation strategy? Well, keep that in your mind.

Let’s start with the inbound marketing funnel that will shape your inbound lead generation strategy.

Inbound Marketing Funnel

In most cases, an Inbound Marketing Funnel consists of three stages called attract, engage, and delight.

You don’t want to send the wrong message at the wrong time. It would be like a sales assistant taking you to the dress section while you’re looking for a skirt.

If you become well-aware of each stage of the inbound marketing funnel and its requirements, you’ll get more leads, more clients, and eventually more revenue. Let’s pass on these four stages.

Attract

The first stage refers to the moment you catch your prospects’ attention and pull them into your page. They, at this stage, can be referred to as newbies.

They find about your company on a social media or Google search, and they haven’t got an idea about your company, credibility, or your product.

You should first focus on raising your brand awareness and educating these people about your product.

The seeds of purchase are planted early. If you make a good and fast first impression, they are more likely to move down through your inbound marketing funnel.

Engage

Now that you got their attention, it’s time to keep this attention fresh. The engaging stage refers to potential customers interested in your product and who think about a purchase.

After having the attention, you need to maintain a healthy relationship and eventually reach leads.

You cannot use the same marketing strategy to raise brand awareness or introduce your product in the attract stage. This is the exact moment you will offer additional content that is going to affect the decision process.

You need to provide solutions and nurture your customers with insights. When these fulfill their requirements, they are more likely to buy from you.

Delight

Your inbound marketing funnel doesn’t end when a user makes a purchase. Repeat customers and purchases are pillars of your funnel.

A study shows that existing customers spend %33 more than new customers -and after all, it’s much easier to satisfy and retain existing customers rather than convert users into customers.

Retention also makes your buyer’s journey infinite -they stay in your inbound marketing funnel consistently.

To maintain a healthy connection with your users, you can provide loyalty programs, value-driven customer accounts, subscriber-only offers, and personalized customer emails. You can also offer cross-sells, upsells, and add-ons in those emails.

Inbound Lead Generation Strategy

Where did we leave off? Right, strategies.

Formulating a good inbound lead generation strategy comes from creating high-quality content. In that sense, there are some other things to focus on that will help you efficiently maintain your marketing in an inbound way.

Here are the strategies for each step of attracting, engaging, and delighting.

Let’s go on.

Attracting Strategies

Inbound lead generation strategies at the attracting stage are highly connected to content creation and distribution.

To reach your audience, start by creating content, regulate it according to search engine results and choose the right medium.

These most effective components to attract users in the first stage can be divided into content creation and search engine optimization.

Content Creation and Distribution

We are drowning in a sea of information on the internet, and users are looking for valuable content in this sea to direct them to a solution.

Therefore, creating high-quality content and distributing it on the right channels is important to draw your prospects in and familiarize them with your brand.

Marketing is a fifty-fifty chance game -there is no guarantee that they’ll buy your product. But helpful and supportive content increases the chance of people to start exploring you.

Blog, Ebooks, guides, and more.

You can also try creating video content that solves your customers’ pain points.

Podcasts are also great mediums to create valuable content.

Search Engine Optimization

It is essential to optimize your content with an SEO strategy and distribute it to the right channel in order to fulfill the needs of your audience and serve them in a better way,

It requires analyzing specific keywords and phrases related to your company or product, the pain points your product solves, and how you help people.

In that way, a piece of your content gets an organic appearance on the search engine results page. Therefore, reach out to the right group of people who can be interested in this content.

You can use Google Ads Keyword Planner that helps you with keyword decisions.

 

You can also use tools like Semrush to optimize your SEO strategy.

Engaging Strategies

As we discussed earlier, you had the attention; now, you need to keep your customers engaged with your site at this stage. Therefore, you should nurture them with authentic materials to keep them in your inbound marketing funnel.

Among these strategies, it is important to create content talking to customers and build long-term relations.

Engagement strategies include social proof, success stories, and fantastic customer support.

Social Proof

People tend to trust a brand that other people have already counted. Your site is the first area where you should create social proof for your products.

 

 

Or you can collaborate with an influencer or social character.

 

Success Story

People trust true stories. It means they trust existing customers who are telling about how much you’ve helped.

SaaS case studies are a great way to influence your inbound marketing strategies and impact your customer’s buying decisions.

Customer Support

Focus on how customer support handles communications -calls, and chats from prospects or interested people; it should always be solution selling rather than product selling.

It will assist your leads to the down of your inbound marketing funnel, which means that you show care and value for them.

Retention Strategies

Now we are at the very end of our inbound marketing funnel, good job! Now it is time to make your customers come back and become loyal.

Retention inbound strategies are used for satisfying and supporting your customers long after they make a purchase.

Filling feedback surveys, creating communities, and assisting customers are some of the methods.

Well-designed and attractive survey emails to gather feedback.

 

Make your customers feel special.

Never forget special days and customized emails.

 

Imagine you own Nike. Yes, Nike.

We know that Nike runs great campaigns for building communities when it comes to creating communities, and it is the best in this game.

 

Using Inbound Marketing to Nurture Your Customers

Inbound marketing strategies work far better than the traditional marketing methods in outbound marketing.

If you successfully optimize your inbound marketing funnel, you can retain people loyal to your brand forever.

Cover image credit to Michell Dong, https://dribbble.com/mitchdong