Marketing is an important aspect and vertical of any company. In recent times there's been an evolution in the marketing field which resulted in the development of two types of verticals. One of them is inbound marketing and the other is outbound marketing. Outbound marketing is our traditional form of marketing which involves the use of advertising campaigns, hiring salespeople, etc, while the latest entrant inbound marketing uses blogs, videos, podcasts, eBooks, etc.

What is Inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is a type of marketing that effectively avails social media, videos, white papers, SEO techniques, etc. This type of marketing relies on attracting customers and is hence considered more powerful and respectable in comparison to traditional outbound marketing. Inbound marketing consists of five stages

1. Attracting traffic

2. Converting the attracted traffic into possible leads

3. Converting the possible leads to certain sales

4. Converting the sales into higher margins

5. Continuous analysis for improvement

Several inbound marketing techniques are complex and rely on targeting specific consumers who are at different stages of brand awareness. The most common of them is funneling where customers are divided, depending on the market segments. The whole point of Inbound marketing is letting the consumer find the company rather than the company going after the customer.

Advantages of Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is a phenomenal avenue and every business can take advantage of it, it may either be used as a stand-alone strategy or maybe clubbed with something else. Here are some advantages outlined:

· Cost effectiveness: Since all the efforts of inbound marketing are essentially done online, it enables the business firm to keep costs low. The use of social media for inbound marketing can in fact do it for you free of charge. Although there will be some costs involved like building a good SEO friendly website etc, these costs will be significantly less than the traditional outbound marketing.

· Attracts Quality Leads: The problem of traditional outbound marketing is that it cannot target any specific audience and because of which it has to take its message to the entire audience, using a social media site while inbound marketing eliminates this problem, helping you reach your target audience better and it thereby helps you to attract more credible and quality leads.

· Promotes engagement: Using social media and online accounts like Facebook, Twitter helps the company to establish a rapport with its fan base, this also helps it to keep its ears to the ground and it knows better what its clients and fans aspire and desire.

Lastly, it helps to build an easy connection with the company’s target audience and firmly establishes the company’s brand in the mind of an audience so that they remember it when they need to buy something relevant.