How Inbound Marketing Is Winning Consumers’ Battle

No doubt, the world of marketing remains one of the fastest growing field that have been experiencing diverse transformation through technology, consumers' interest and global economy. Consumers have shut off the traditional world of marketing. They have become wiser enough to skip television advertising, overlook newspaper and magazine advertising and also become ignore online ‘surfing’ advertising by skipping banners and buttons.

Smart marketers understand that traditional marketing is becoming less effective by the minute, and that there has to be a better way. Some of the greatest marketing companies in the world, including Microsoft, P&G, Heineken, Samsung, Coca-Cola etc regardless of what type of marketing tactics they deploy nowadays affix inbound and content marketing as part of their content stratagem.

Nowadays, consumers are in control. They don’t need to be found, they find the product they want. And inbound marketing willingly accept this fact.

Not only are they in control, but they’re self-educated. By the time they are ready to purchase, they know what they need, they just don’t know who they’re going to buy it from yet. This is why inbound marketing stands the greatest chance at reeling in quality buyers. How? Because we are armed and ready with the information our customers are looking for.

Yet to know what inbound marketing is all about? Well, succinctly defined, inbound marketing is the strategy of connecting with potential customers through materials and experiences they find useful. Using media like blogs and social networking, marketers hope to entertain and inform viewers with content they seek by themselves.

Inbound Marketing

Beyond just creating quality content, inbound marketers take a lot of time up front getting to know their potential customers. We know content is only as good as it is relevant. If our buyers need product A and we come prepared to talk about Product B, we’ve failed the mission—it’s that simple. But how does one go about getting to know their buyers? Two words— buyer personas. Here, marketers invest their time understanding the buyer’s journey. To really master personas though, you need to know buyer pain points, too. And more importantly, your content must speak to the specific buyer pain points.

If marketing in general wants to redeem itself, it must stop trying to sell and start educating. It’s time to stop pushing messages on buyers and start pulling them in with quality content that’s specific to their needs. After all, it is about them, so the solutions you offer should be about them.

According to Chinelo Ngene, Head of Marketing and PR at Jovago, inbound marketing earns attention through two-way communication, great content, and creating value. "Some of the best ways of doing this include creating educational posts that people can relate to, not just company news; include SEO texts to your PR/Content posts; use your releases to create infographics, eBooks, podcasts,white papers and other pieces of content, and push content on social media"

A content strategist and market researcher, Ugochukwu Chidi also believes companies who want to always be at the forefront of competition with its competitors need to be well informed and often carry out research periodically in order to know how to communicate effectively with its consumers.

Sharing a personal experience, Chidi said: "I've been practicing this for over a year, interfacing with media outlets, and getting incredible results. I've found that by submitting branded content (pitch letters and background information) written as post/print ready copy, our materials get used (often verbatim) by newspapers and blog sites that don't have a reporter to assign but want to run the story.

"Using this approach, we've seen front page stories in daily newspapers more than once, and bloggers love how easy we make their jobs and readily post our content, as it. In this industry environment of strained journalism resources, editors are often delighted to receive copy that reads like it was written by a journalist, though it really comes from PR. More evidence that good writing is an intrinsic and indispensable element of good public relations", he said.

Susan Adejumo, an entrepreneur, said she had to engage in inbound marketing because she can’t afford the fund to hire the service of a PR agency or advertising pro.

She said: “Sincerely, I mainly engage in inbound and content marketing and it has been a high success for my business. Most bloggers have really help me to get the attention I crave for and I’m so lucky I deviated from the traditional media and yet have huge online publicity.”