Inbound Marketing 101: The Foundational Blocks of Inbound Marketing Strategy

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. 

    • 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

    • Force Specific Layout for CRM Contacts Portal

      Hello: We're in trial on ZOHO One and looking at the CRM Portal (just for the contacts module). We have a client layout set up for Contacts that is working well for our internally, but for the portal we don't want to require (make mandatory) some of the

    • Automatic Removal of Departments and Groups for Inactive Employees in Zoho One

      Hi Zoho One Team, We hope you're doing well. Currently, when an employee is marked as inactive in Zoho One, they remain listed as a member of their department and associated groups. This creates a challenge in maintaining accurate records and ensuring

    • Zoho Sheets not compatible with Excel/Google Sheets

      In order to share a copy of a Zoho sheet with someone that does not use Zoho, it must be downloaded as MS Excel format and then added to an email.  This is a labor intensive, and frankly confusing process.  I have forgotten to do this before, only to

    • Change eMail Template for Event-Invitations

      Hello ZOHO-CRM Team How I can change the eMail Template for Event-Invitations? I work with the German Version of the Free Version. I know how I can modify eMail alerts or Signature Templates, but where I can other eMails modify you send out? Thank you for your answer. Regards, Juerg

    • Zoho Social integration with Zoho Flow

      Is there any plans for Zoho Social integration with Zoho Flow?

    • Zoho CRM Widget and translations

      Hi everyone! We're building a Widget with zoho-extension-toolkit, how is localization supposed to work? "zet init" created a translations/en.json file, but what should go inside it and how is it supposed to be accessed from the Widget/javascript? Thanks

    • Bienvenue à Zoho FSM : l'optimisation des opérations locales qui offre une expérience de service impeccable

      Nous sommes ravis de vous présenter Zoho FSM, la plateforme de gestion des services terrain de bout en bout. Les solutions de gestion des services locaux s'adressent aux organisations qui effectuent des activités d'installation, de réparation et de maintenance

    • Adding tag to specific record as an acion in a workflow

      Hi! I've created the following workflow in the module 'Leads'. When a record meets the criteria, there should be a tag added to the specific record in the module 'Contacts'. In the module 'Leads', there is a look-up field named 'Kandidaat' which is connected

    • Trying to catch error with ZOHO.CRM.HTTP.get (Response Code)

      Hello, I'm trying to get response header from ZOHO.CRM.HTTP.get, in order to catch error like 404 or something else but it seems that ZOHO.CRM.HTTP.get() method only returns the body of the response, and I see no way to access the headers returned. Is

    • FSM - How to ADD PHOTOS to Estimates & Invoices

      How can you add photos to estimates and invoices that are being emailed to the client so the can see what you are estimating and your completed work?

    • Free developer edition of Zoho CRM

      A question for Zoho and other developers: How can you set up a demonstration version of a Zoho CRM implementation to show employers/clients what can be achieved? Do you pay for Zoho CRM Enterprise/Zoho One for this purpose? Does Zoho offer a free version

    • Can I add Conditional merge tags on my Templates?

      Hi I was wondering if I can use Conditional Mail Merge tags inside my Email templates/Quotes etc within the CRM? In spanish and in our business we use gender and academic degree salutations , ie: Dr., Dra., Sr., Srta., so the beginning of an email / letter

    • Where are scheduled emails stored?

      After you schedule an email to go out through the CRM, how do you go about changing that scheduled email? Or even where can I see the list of emails scheduled to go out? They are not listed in my Zoho Mail account in Outbox which has been the only answer

    • CRM Home Page Dashboard, how can i add zoho desk cases?

      How can i see which tickets are in my group as a dashboard component on the home tab in zoho crm? I don't see any way of adding this.

    • Custom Module missing SDK function fetchRelatedRecords(...) in a Client Script

      Good day, We have added a new module with a Multi-Lookup relation to Contacts.  When we tried to use the fetchRelatedRecords(id, related_list_api_name) function to get Related Records it is missing for our new custom module. https://js.zohocdn.com/crm/5124797/documentation/DotSDK/Modules.html

    • Subform Client Script

      Good day,  I have a subform where users can subscribe to various magazines. I would like to prevent the user from selecting the same magazine twice when adding a new row. Is there a way to prevent the user from doing this? (Can it be done via a client

    • Checklist/ save to onedrive/ a group of items invoicing in Zoho FSM

      hi, is there a way to add a specific checklist to any WO without passing eachtime by the model customization? can we save file such picture directly in our sharepoint ak onedrive? is there any way to add a group of item pre defined to make invoicing easier

    • Serious question: Are there actually "solo-preneurs"/small business owners who made Zoho-one work well for them?

      L.S. After already many years of continued struggle with Zoho-One, I am seriously wondering if there are actually solo-preneurs (one person small business owners - without a large, dedicated IT dept.) who got it (Zoho-One) to work well for their businesses.

    • Calendar Bookings in Recruit

      Hi there, We have recently started using Zoho recruit and although it has some great functionality there are a few gaps that are causing real headaches. One of those being how interviews are scheduled. The majority of our hiring managers are field based

    • Getting Error : Developer Tool Detected

      Hi Team, Getting the error during open the portal, error attached on the same ticket. Please check and help us to resolve the same.

    • Send Zoho Creator Template by Email or sendemail

      Hello All Question:- How we can send the Zoho creator email template using the send email by the workflow or using the Function? by the Workflow sendmail [ from: zoho.adminuserid to: "zohodeveloper@yopmail.com" subject: "Test Template" message: "Test

    • Upgraded to Zoho One but Zoho Meeting still says Free Plan

      I signed-up for the Zoho One plan. When exploring the applications included, I came across a problem with Zoho Meeting. It says it's the free plan. I emailed support but they sent me a link that doesn't work and, when I found the article on my own, it

    • 新年のご挨拶、直近のイベントスケジュール

      🎍🐍謹賀新年🎍🐍 ユーザーの皆さま、明けましておめでとうございます！ コミュニティチームの中野です。 本年もよろしくお願い致します。 昨年のZoho Japanコミュニティでは、東京・大阪・名古屋・福岡 4都市でのユーザー交流会開催や、自社最大イベント「Zoholics Japan 2024」でZoho Championの皆さまとのパネルディスカッション、10月の東京ユーザー交流会では本社CRMプロダクトマネージャーを招きロードマップ解説セッションの実施、さらにZohoアンバサダープログラムのローンチ（近日公開予定）など、新たな取り組みに挑戦しました。

    • How to create Item in the Eazy ERP Software ?

      Item Master is used for the creation of an item in the Eazy ERP Software. It is necessary to create items to maintain the stock and pass the transactions in the software. Go to Control Panel > Store > Item Master. An Items window will appear. The user

    • Directly Edit, Filter, and Sort Subforms on the Details Page

      Hello everyone, As you know, subforms allow you to associate multiple line items with a single record, greatly enhancing your data organization. For example, a sales order subform neatly lists all products, their quantities, amounts, and other relevant

    • Request to Customize Module Bar Placement in New Zoho CRM UI

      Hello Support and Zoho Community, I've been exploring the new UI of Zoho CRM "For Everyone" and have noticed a potential concern for my users. We are accustomed to having the module names displayed across the top, which made navigation more intuitive

    • Client script: Can not choose a date field for an onChange field event

      Hi Zoho Team Why can't I choose one of my date fields to trigger an onChange event? Is this a client script limitation, or something wrong with my instance? If it is a limitation, is this mentioned in the documentation anywhere? Thanks. Marcus

    • How to upload mass inventory quantity adjustment with batch number?

      I wanted to clean-up our inventory list; however, I have trouble performing the task as I don't know how to mass upload inventory adjustment with batch numbers. I don't want to do it manually as there are if not thousands at hundreds of inventory tr

    • Power BI connector (Zoho Creator) to Zoho Projects

      How can i connect power bi to Zoho Projects? domain is zoho.com How can i find workspace name, application link name and Report link name?

    • Upgrade User

      Hi Sir/Madame, I have 7 users in my organisation but I need upgrade more space only 2 users. Is it possibe? Thanks

    • Dashboard Auto-refresh

      Why is there no Auto-refresh on the Dashboard? People have been asking for the last 6 years for this function from what I can see in my reasearch, it seems like a very simple intergration for Zoho to achieve. on Sept. 2, 2014, this was added: Support

    • Console error with widget in View mode, not present in Edit Mode with ZOHO.CRM.API.updateRecord(config)

      hello i have that function to update an account records (from a widgets created with sigma) function handleCopyButtonCRMClick() { console.log('handleCopyButtonCRMClick'); /* * Fetch Information of Record passed in PageLoad * and insert the response into

    • add meeting link

      i want to add A meeting link in the mail when the user book the appointment then with the conformation mail i want to add meeting link there

    • Unable to add Guest Members

      We are having issues adding Guest Members to our Cliq account. We have sent out a number of request but it seems that only some people are able to access the platform. Others have received a message stating that they need to be granted access from an

    • CRM x WorkDrive: File storage for new CRM signups is now powered by WorkDrive

      Availability Editions: All DCs: All Release plan: Released for new signups in all DCs. It will be enabled for existing users in a phased manner in the upcoming months. Help documentation: Documents in Zoho CRM Manage folders in Documents tab Manage files

    • Zoho One - White Label

      Releasing a white-label feature for Zoho One, or any software or service, can offer several advantages and benefits for both the company providing the software (Zoho in this case) and its users. Here are some key reasons for releasing a white-label feature

    • Missing parameters in request, any way i can figure out what parameters i need to add?

      const url = "https://people.zoho.com/people/api/forms/json/P_Task/insertRecord"; const inputData = { "Status": "Open", "Description": "Task to set up and configure Zoho Mail on desktop application.", "CreatedTime": "01-Jan-2025 10:30 AM", "Due_Date":

    • Address Grabber function for Zoho

      I converted from ACT to Zoho. With ACT, I used an add-on called AddressGrabber to scrape the contact information from leads that I buy and contact information contained on emails and websites and directly add it as a new lead or contact. Does anyone know

    • Can you modify "Last Activity Time" in deluge? If so what's the field name?

      I need to perform some bulk modifications on records in the Leads module, but I need to avoid changing the "last activity time" or "date modified" because I am using those fields to filter and sort leads for follow-up action. I cannot find an answer anywhere

    • Running Total % in Pivot with filters

      Hi there, I have seen a few posts on this topic, but i cant seem to find one that will work when applyig filters to the data. I have Rows and Data in a pivot view I want to show the running total of revenue as a % of the total for the data set. If i add

    • Next Page