Inbound Marketing 101: The Foundational Blocks of Inbound Marketing Strategy

According to a behaviour survey, 68% of the buyers use sources such as blogs to evaluate the product even before considering it. Before buying a product, we do a lot of research to learn more about the product through communities, blogs, social media, or videos. Offering educational content to attract relevant potential customers to your website organically without paid media ads is inbound marketing. 

What's great about inbound marketing is that the buyers are not persuaded directly to buy the product. Instead, you are letting them understand its know-how and educating them. This strategy effectively opens a door to attracting more visitors to your website.

Enticing more strangers, converting them to leads, closing deals, and finally creating brand advocates can be easily achieved when you optimize your foundational blocks under the inbound marketing method. They are, i) understanding and defining your target audience, ii) mapping the buyer's journey, and iii) serving value through content.

Why create a buyer persona?

Spending time crafting quality content without defining your target audience, is a big no. 

Develop a buyer's persona by identifying, and defining target audience, leveraging data based on demography, challenges, and goals.

It helps you to think from your customers' perspective to understand their challenges and thereby figure out how your solution can help bridge the gap. It is easy to create a buyer persona by simply analyzing  this few pro-questions categorically. 

 

Demography

• What is the name of the persona? A pro tip: Naming the persona along with the role helps to remember the person's role throughout the process
  
• What age does your persona fall under?
  
• What gender?
  
• What is your persona's educational qualification (mention the highest degree earned by your persona)?
  
• What is the persona's role?
  
• How much does your persona earn per annum?
  
• What type of organization and where does the persona work? (mention its growth)
  

Responsibility

• What are the goals and objectives of the persona? (List at least two) 
  
• What makes this persona successful in the role?
  

Challenges

• What are the persona's challenges?
  
• What tools does your persona use?
  

 A final outlook would look similar to the persona I have created above. Analysing the answers helps in identifying where your solution best fits and you can tailor your message accordingly. If you are unsure of matching your customer's perspective, then you can interview your customers or prospects to get answers to your questions. 

What are the different stages of the Buyer's journey?

Knowing where your audience is in the pipeline helps you figure out the content that best suits them and eventually paves the way in product sales. Customer journey or buyer's journey what  tracks your customers' conversion path and optimizes strategy based on their status in the marketing funnel. The buyer's journey is divided into four stages. 

 

Discovering stage:

This is the beginning or the phase  where your audience is in search of solutions to their business problems. Providing 'how-to' guides and informative blogs resonate well with your audience and attracts new leads to your website. Don't pitch your product or service here. 

For instance: Let's say a user is looking for an ideal solution to manage his contacts. He is looking for contact management. To capture the user's interest, you can suggest they read a blog that explains the importance of CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

 

Considering stage:

During this phase, your audience wants to learn more about your product or service that might fit their needs. Prompting them to download an ebook or whitepaper as a takeaway allows you more information about your buyers.

 

If the user proceeds to download a suggested resource such as an ebook, the marketing team can follow up with an invite to a webinar or workshop to learn more about the product without being pushy. 

 

Finalising stage:

This last phase is also called the revenue-creation stage where the buyer decides whether to choose your solution or not. Regular follow-ups at right intervals maximize the chances of conversion.

 

After gauging the user's interest, the sales team pitches in with an offer of a  demo tailored to the user's needs. Showcasing the ability to address the user's problem with your product or solution is crossing 90% of this bridge. Patience and showing you understand and value the users's needs is key here. 

 

Promoting stage

Happy and satisfied customers will be your brand advocates and help in promoting and recommending your product or service to their peers. 93% of B2B businesses can easily convert a referral to a customer when your brand advocates recommend them. Also, there is a good chance of cross-selling the product to your loyal customer base effortlessly.

 

Once your deal is closed, it doesn't stop there. You have to assist the customers when required, constantly follow up and support them in their growth phase. This paves the way in building your brand champions who will bring in quality leads.

Why to capitalize on content marketing - the backbone of inbound marketing

Today we live in an information-dense world and it is no surprise that content is the key. Content marketing is a strategy to create and deliver contextually relevant information. It can be blogs, newsletters, landing page, emails, videos, social media - everything that serves information or shares content. Communities, blogs, and social media are widely considered the best platforms to share and promote content. 

Communities

Communities are networking spaces for a peer group with common interests to connect, learn, and share experiences, build expertise, and make contacts. Communities inspire trust and help build credibility for a brand. When content is shared or opinions are expressed, it endorses a brand and validates the thoughts of users and therefore influences buying decisions greatly.

Blogging

Blogging gives you a space to publish content that attracts visitors to your website. It opens up a world of knowledge that has made it a sought after medium to learn new things.

Simple tips that can go a long way in blogging:

• Choose a long-tail keyword topic as it is SEO friendly and more specific.
  
• Ensure your title is not more than 60 characters because the google display screen is 600 pixels.
  
• While drafting blogs, address the industry, not your business 
  
• While formatting, have a lot of white space for easy navigation and include images, gifs, and videos wherever necessary 
  
• Optimize your content for SEO, including your long-tail keyword in title, body, URL, Alt text, and meta description
  
• Your blog posts must be mobile friendly.
  

 

Social media

On average a person spends 142 minutes a day on social media. Social media marketing became and continues to be the hub to spread content and create brand awareness to attract more users, and drive growth. There are a lot of social media platforms. Choosing your ideal platform extends better reach and visibility. 

For example, If you want to increase your engagement rate, you can give Instagram a shot as its engagement rate is 10 times more than what Facebook and 80 times more than what Twitter gives you.

If you want to know more about your target audience or build a leadership portfolio, Linkedin is the right platform. 

Best social media strategies to increase your overall engagement rate:

• Always keep a tab on your social media performance. Continuous monitoring helps to spot the areas that need more attention.
  
• Don't focus on the likes. Other crucial parameters define the quality of the content such as shares, comments, and followers.
  
• Identify your optimal time and optimise the posts further. 
  
• Captivating user-generated content creates more engagement and builds credibility.
  
• Using relevant hashtags bring more traffic. Don't use generic hashtags as the search results are high in volume.
  

Each social media platform is different and unique in its purpose. Identifying which social media handle your audience spend more time on, helps tailor the content that is more relevant and meaningful in delivering the message.

 

Pro tip: Perform social listening. Social listening tools surf the social media to find out if someone mentions you, and notifies you instantly. There are free tools for social listening such as google alerts and Zoho Social to monitor mentions and also analyze your social media performance.

 

Whether it is blogging, communities, or social media marketing, content marketing is core to all these mediums, and great content marketing is the art of delivering value without selling. 

• Topic Participants

• Shaveethira G

  

• Alex

• Kirian

• Vinit Tibrewal

  

• Sticky Posts

• 10 simple e-commerce marketing tips to boost sales

  Congratulations! You've finally set up that e-commerce store you've been thinking about for a long time. Hopefully it wasn't too difficult. Even if it was, the effort will be totally worth it when you start seeing some orders come through. Now that the store is live, let's take a look at some marketing tips you can apply for sales growth. 1. Avoid cart abandonment If you've ever shopped online, you might have added a product to the cart but then decided not to purchase it. This is known as cart abandonment.

• Marketing in a post COVID-19 world!

  Consumers across countries are increasingly spending more time on a wide variety of digital activities, right from online grocery shopping, to video conferencing, to tele-medicine. There is a good chance that you performed one or more of the following activities during this lockdown, thanks to COVID 19: Cooked a meal Made a TikTok Video Signed up for a remote learning session Consulted a doctor online (or ordered medicines online) Shopped for groceries online A study by Hunter, a food and beverage

• Inbound Marketing 101: The Foundational Blocks of Inbound Marketing Strategy

  According to a behaviour survey, 68% of the buyers use sources such as blogs to evaluate the product even before considering it. Before buying a product, we do a lot of research to learn more about the product through communities, blogs, social media,

• How Zylker doubled their webinar registrations!

  Webinars are good educational resources to gather qualified leads for your product. But what if your visitors are dropping off from your webinar landing page without signing up? What more could you do to convert visitors into registrants? This is the

• The ideology behind why features tell, but benefits sell

  Do you think there's any truth to this? Do features only tell, and benefits sell?  Well, let's see why we should focus on benefits rather than features as the great marketing wizards, David Ogilvy and Steve Jobs proved to be the best examples leveraging

• Recent Topics

• ZOHO BOOKS - RECEIVING MORE ITEMS THAN ORDERED

  Hello, When trying to enter a vendor's bill that contains items with bigger quantity than ordered in the PO (it happens quite often) - The system would not let us save the bill and show this error: "Quantity recorded cannot be more than quantity ordered." 

• Has anyone successfully added Microsoft Graph API Oauth2 as a connection?

  I'm having trouble getting Microsoft Graph API created as a connection in zoho crm. Has anyone successfully added Microsoft Graph API Oauth2 as a connection? My issue is not necessarily on the Zoho side, but understanding how to set up the Microsoft side

• Syncing Timesheets between Projects and Desk

  All users able to see their own timelog entries from all apps in one place, synced immediately. All managers able to view total/all time entries from one place. This is something that has come up for us and multiple clients. Example: we have a client

• Spell Check default language

  Hello All, Is it possible to set the Spell Check default language? I can't find it in the settings. Thanks a lot! Levente

• Zoho Backstage 3.0 - Boostez vos événements avec des outils malins

  Zoho Backstage vous accompagne dans l’organisation d’événements réussis, avec des outils qui simplifient la planification, optimisent l’exécution et renforcent la connexion avec votre public. La version 2.0 a apporté une nouvelle interface, plus de flexibilité

• Portal user activity reporting

  Aside from the metrics section in the admin dashboard, is there a way to view/create reports for portal user activity? Im looking for a more granular option to see exactly what users are utilizing the portal. Thanks!

• Automation #11 - Auto Update Custom Fields with Values from Emails

  This is a monthly series designed to help you get the best out of Desk. We take our cue from what's being discussed or asked about the most in our community. Then we find the right use cases that specifically highlight solutions, ideas and tips to optimize

• Admins to set Agents Picture

  Admins should not have to rely on agents to set a nice profile picture for them. Admins get the headshot pictures from HR and should be able to upload and set their picture, not rely on them to: 1) upload a picture at all 2) upload a good picture 3) upload

• Time Tracking Reporting and Billing

  I wish for the time tracking module to be enhanced further. Currently it is independent of Support Plans and Contracts. Support Plans and Contracts are also mostly separate. We need a better dashboard of this with the ability to natively mark billed or

• Enhanced Email Signature Folding

  We have departmental signatures setup which are great, however, when viewing ticket details, it gets very overwhelming when scrolling though threads and conversations where you scroll past ten different signatures of your own team, then ten signatures

• How to add formatting in zoho.cliq.postToUser(...) message?

  In a CRM Deluge function, I'm trying to use the message formatting guidelines given here: https://www.zoho.com/deluge/help/cliq/posting-to-zoho-cliq.html#message-formats My message is: message: #Title text. The result in Cliq is: #Title text. (no large

• How to add line breaks in zoho.cliq.postToUser(...) message?

  In a CRM function using Deluge I'm sending this message and attempting to add some line breaks but they are ignored. Is there another way to add these breaks? My message: message: New urgent task\nDescription \nThis is a fake description.\n A new line?

• Zia Agents/End of Day Reports

  As a manager or owner it would be nice if Zia analyzed today's (or this week's tickets) and gave an end of the day report to management team. - what important tickets were worked on or submitted today? - what agents were unproductive today and answered

• Project Cost Tracking

  I see there are questions/concerns that Zoho doesn't track costs to a tasks in a project. We are a manufacturer and are in the early stages of tracking costs to project. I would like to expand out the COGS Chart of accounts in Books and record costs via

• How to record if the payment made is return due to transaction failed.

  So there is Bill of $2000, and a payments made transaction to clear the bill. The amount is actually deducted from bank account. However, a few days later, I found the bank returned only $1750 cause there are $250 bank service charge for this failed transaction.

• Help Center Customization UI

  The customization screens for the help center needs the UI improved. It looks straight out of 2004. The Zoho Desk normal UI is great. All it takes is uniform fonts and colors across all parts of the tool... I compare this to Zendesk Guide.

• Este domínio já está associado a esta conta

  Fui fazer meu cadastro na zoho e quando digitei meu domínio recebi essa mensagem que meu domínio estava associado a uma conta que eu nem faço idéia de quem seja. Como que faço pra resolver isso? Atenciosamente, Anderson Souza.

• I need some help in Expenses Per Diem Policy

  this is my script written for restricting the PerDiem Components. Say if Lodging and Per Day Allowance both is selected from Per Diem Page then the report should gets auto rejected. When Im trying to executing it says the following error {"code":11,"message":"The

• Adding Photos to Dashboards on Zoho Analytics

  I am creating a dashboard to showcase data from survey results from focus groups. I am creating a focus group participant profile tab where it is filtered by the name of the participant and showcases information about them using KPI widgets. I am running

• What is the difference between Retainer invoice and Advance Payments?

  Retainer invoice seem like they are just advance payments with extra details. Instead of creating a Sales Order with order details, a retainer is created. It feels like they are a workaround to link advance payments with sales orders. Is there any advantage

• Exporting record notes in bulk

  Hi team, Is it possible to bulk export the notes attached to a record? i.e to a CSV file or otherwise. Our use case is exporting all notes for our lead/account/Deal records. We have another system we'd like to import these notes to but I can't seem to

• Field customization

  Hi Team Good day! I am a commission agent who sell and purchase goods from vendors, while in purchasing invoices I am not able to deduct the expenses such as commission and other expenses on actual amount. Kindly help me to customize the invoice based

• vendors / customers with 2 different address and gst no

  Why can't we have option for more than one address and depending on the state option for more than 1 GST no. ? We have customers / vendors PAN india with different addresses and GST no. for different states.

• Error: Invalid Element gst_no, Invalid Element gst_treatment, Invalid Element place_of_contact

  so i am creating a new contact post request and i want add gst infomation when amount is above 50000 and if pass gst info in request body then i get this errors > Error: Invalid Element gst_no, Invalid Element gst_treatment, Invalid Element place_of_contact

• Add multiple Billing Addresses under one GST number

  My client owns multiple businesses in various locations but they all come under one GST. Is there a way to add multiple billing addresses for the same GST? Managing this by adding multiple Shipping addresses is not an option. The client wants the GST

• Zoho Mail API - Upload Attachment

  https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/api/post-upload-attachments.html I followed the steps from the API documentation and wrote a backend in JavaScript to send emails. Normal emails are sent without any problems. However, I can’t send emails with attachments.

• Unable to create custom fields for shipment order

  I'm unable to create custom fields for shipment orders, even though the custom fields are set up correctly. A request to the following endpoint: https://www.zohoapis.com/inventory/v1/settings/preferences/customfields?organization_id=${ZOHO_ORGANIZATION_ID}&entity=shipment_order

• Kaizen #202 - Answering Your Questions | Testing and Using REST APIs in Widgets

  Hello Developers! Welcome back to a fresh week of Kaizen! Thank you for your active participation in sharing feedback and queries for the 200th milestone. This week, we will look at the following queries related to widget: Widget Testing Using REST API

• Introducing the 'Send as Email' option on the Zoho Desk iOS mobile app

  Hello everyone! In the latest version(v2.10.2) of the Zoho Desk iOS app, we have brought in support for the 'Send as Email' option while creating a ticket. This feature enables you to reach out to the customers by sending outbound emails. The emails are

• Zoho Forms Not Loading on Website – DNS Resolution Error

  Dear Zoho Support Team, User ID : 20069458731 We are experiencing an issue with the Zoho Form embedded on our website (https://vitel.com.tr/satis-destek-formu/). The form is not loading, and the following error message appears in the browser: “forms.zohopublic.eu

• Data backup retention question/

  My zohocrm subscription gives me 2 full data backups per month. I have a scheduled backup configured to run twice a month. I just went to download my backup and i can't find it, it ran about 9 days ago... From what i can tell with google zoho only keeps

• Basic Apple Watch App

  Sometimes I leave my phone behind. I will get push notifications that tickets are updated etc.. It would be nice to at least view them and do a few basic functions. reassign. public reply. private comment.

• Look and Feel Uniformity

  Someone needs to go through the mobile app and match the look and feel of the web version. For example, it is global standard to highlight private notes as yellow background hue. Desk does that on web, but not on mobile. Mobile also has an odd blue icon

• Managing two books in Zoho Books

  is it possible to effectively manage two separate books within Zoho Books? My organization is considering handling accounting for two distinct subsidiaries, and we would like to understand the best way to achieve this within the Zoho Books.

• Display All Custom Buttons Without Dropdown on Record Page

  In my org's workflow we usually want to do some kind of quick action off of an individual record - i.e. of an individual contact, or individual deal. What we have always found a hindrance is the location of all custom buttons being in the drop down on

• Zoho Sales Team - Extremely Slow Response Times

  Hi everyone, Has anyone else experienced unusually slow response times from Zoho’s sales team? I sent an email last night, and it’s been nearly 24 hours with no reply. While I understand delays can happen, this seems longer than expected for a sales inquiry.

• Yodlee Bank Feeds

  I'm well aware of the many bank feed issues out there that haven't been resolved, but I'm looking for information on Rules in relation to bank feeds. U.S based, Bank of America user and prior to Yodlee all of my banking feeds and Rules worked seamlessly.

• Unable to create custom function

  Unable to create custom function - Please check the screenshot for the details HERE IS THE FUNCTION!! try { // 1. Fetch the details of the approved Bill using its ID billDetails = zoho.books.getRecordById("Bills", organization.get("organization_id"),

• Need a feature which can validate PAN from Income Tax Portal

  Hello Zoho, We need a feature which can help us validate PAN which is being entered in AR/AP Profiles to check if it is valid and display the name as per Income Tax so as to get rid of incorrect PAN into the systems. Please do the needful Thanks

• PAN - Aadhar Link Status

  Can Zohobooks also get latest PAN-Aadhar Linking Status from Income Tax Portal ?

• Next Page