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

• Assign task owner using Deluge

  Use Case: Each task is a document development task wherein once the developer has completed the first draft, the next step in the process is for the document to be QA-ed by the project's assigned auditor. Thus, I am currently working out a blueprint where

• Using AVG in SQL Query

  My current SQL Query is: SELECT "Client Info", avg("Revenue") FROM "Funded Deals" GROUP BY "Client Info" The current table that this is creating: Client Info avg(Revenue) Previous 4175 1st - New 3411 1st - Old 3013 Renew 3069 While this works as I had

• The Next Chapter for CRM for Everyone: Moving from Early Access to Phased Rollout for Customers

  #CRM25Q1 Hello Everyone, Until now, CRM for Everyone has been available in early access mode exclusively for users who opted to try the new version. We are now transitioning to a phased release, starting with the basic edition. We are thrilled to announce

• Issue with Bulk Edit Triggering Function Multiple Times in Zoho Report

  In our Zoho report, we have observed an issue where executing a function during a bulk edit operation runs the function multiple times—once for each selected report entry. This behavior is causing errors due to overlapping or redundant executions. Our

• Meta and Facebook data report discrepancy

  I have been currently gathering manually facebook follower data thru meta. In zoho marketing plus the social media reporting only allows for page likes, and so there is a discrepancy with the data. please the difference in files attached. Is there way

• Links in Instagram

  Hi there, I have been using Later for a while now but keen to come back to Zoho Social as Later doesn't offer tagging of pages on Facebook but they offer something Zoho doesn't. You can add a link to your bio which opens up your profile feed where images

• Sort By Date - Deluge

  I have the following code, which normally works to sort calls by created time. Every once in a while, it doesn't work and something sneaks through in the wrong order and I can't figure out why. calls = zoho.crm.searchRecords("Calls","(Owner:equals:" +

• How to Enforce Mandatory Fields (Category/Sub-category) Before Closing a Ticket?

  Hi, I'm currently using Zoho Desk and encountering an issue where agents are able to close tickets without filling out mandatory fields, specifically Category and Sub-category. I’ve already set them both as a mandatory field, but it can still be bypassed

• If I turn off the Task Prefix & ID in the Portal Configuration section, will it remove the dependencies in my projects?

  Hi all, basically the title, I am new to zoho projects and trying to get my head around some basic principles. Unfortunately I have not found this information via the search option and after deleting yesterday some Phases I had created in the Phases tab,

• Admin Control for Default Email Templates in Zoho Desk

  Hi Zoho Desk Team, We would like to request a feature enhancement related to default email templates. Currently, agents can select and set their own default email templates when replying to tickets. However, we believe this setting should be managed centrally

• Enter dates in tasks with just "tue" or "+10" or "5d" ???

  Is there any way to enter due dates in tasks without typing the whole date or making time consuming clicks in the calendar? I don't see anything online in the help or third party videos.

• How can the direct link to a ticket be created from ticket #?

  Our agents will be using ZDesk but we will have to create direct link to tickets in another ERP by providing the Desk Ticket # Is there a way to create the direkt links from the ticket # alone? Do we have to use the API to get the direct links?

• Multiple time zones in zoho projects

  We are working in an international team. We need to set up different time zones in the organizational settings or at least for one project within zoho projects. Any ideas or help? Thx in advance

• Zoho Desk : Field for 'Layout'

  I have many different layouts on my helpdesks and I want to be able to identify the stats for each one, however I can not find the field in the raw data from the Zoho Desk datasource. I thought it might be in the "Tickets" table but there is nothing.

• Customize Zoho One Dashboard and URL?

  Hi everyone, Is there a way to customize my Zoho One URL to be different from the default portal URL? The current portal URL is: one.zoho.com/zohoone/[organization] I want to map it to its own standalone domain that we own. eg) domain.com instead of one.zoho.com/zohoone/[organization]

• Enable Sending Direct Messages to Self in Zoho Cliq

  Hi, I would like to request a feature enhancement for Zoho Cliq to allow users to send direct messages to themselves. Currently, Zoho Cliq does not have the option to send a direct message to oneself. While creating a channel with just one member (the

• Guidance on Making Zoho Desk Connections Available for All Data Centers

  Hi Team, I’m currently developing an application using Zoho Desk connections to manage OAuth for my third-party products. Could you please advise on the steps required to make it available across all data centers? Looking forward to your thoughts on

• Emailing lookup field but placing this as an ID or number rather than text

  Hi there, First time poster and have been a user of Zoho Creator for approx 6weeks so forgive my ignorance as I learn to code. We have a need to send an email to a specific email address with some of the fields triggered by the submission of a form. In

• JOB Sheet can not send PDF as service rapports and more info needed other topic

  Goedendag, - Jullie hebben nu job sheet erin gedaan en dar is echt super goed, enkel kunnen we de werkbon ( JOB sheet) nu niet verzenden als PDF als een service rapport naar onze hoofdaannemer hoe we dat nu doen als bewijs van de levering van het werk

• Tax Deduction at Source (TDS)

  I issued a sale invoice outside UAE , the customer apply TDS on the invoice , i checked my Zoho ( professional version ) i couldn't find the option of Enable TDS to let it appear while posting the incoming payment , please how to make it and how to configure

• UNAPPROVED record management

  When the unapproved list of duplicates is long, one needs the some tools to manage them - when this list has over 1500 records, we cannot manage it without some tools, such as: 1. The ability to apply a filter - ie similar to creating a CREATE a NEW VIEW

• Zoho mail filter Add to WorkDrive doesnt't work

  Hello, We have a problem with using the filter in the email. So, we want that when a bulk payment confirmation from the online store arrives, this email is automatically saved in HTML format on the drive using the action 'Add to Zoho WorkDrive -> Email

• Introducing Zia GenAI: Zoho's Native Generative AI for Zoho Desk

  Hello everyone, Zia GenAI is available on Early Access for Zoho Desk Enterprise subscribers. Kindly fill out this Registration Form to request early access. We are excited to announce the Beta release of Zia GenAI in Zoho Desk, now available through our

• Add blueprint buttons to listview and kanban

  Hello, just started to use the Blueprints feature - really useful. I have one suggestion to help this work even better - can there be transition buttons that appear on the top of listview & Kanban? Maybe an option as well - "Blueprint transitions appear

• Deleted message in SPAM

  In one of my gmail accounts (getnickifit@gmail.com) I had an email from PayPal in the SPAM folder. I thought I was moving the message to the inbox from the zoho mobile but it looks like it was deleted. It is no where to be found--inbox, trash, etc. Can it be restored?

• 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

• Multiple Facebook Pages under Single Brand

  Hi everyone, I'd like to know if there is a possibility of connecting multiple Facebook pages under a single brand on Zoho? At the moment, there are different Facebook pages of a single brand and would want to keep under the same brand on Zoho as we

• Zoho Books Estimate to Zoho CRM quote?

  I'm not sure why this isnt automatic, but maybe I'm missing something. When we create a quote in zoho books we have a custom function that pushes the contact into a deal within the CRM. I can not for the life of me figure out how to push an estimate from

• Zoho Developer Hangout (ZDH) – Episode 17 | Optimizing Organizational Processes through Automation

  Hey developers! Running a business can get quite overwhelming especially when juggling multiple tools like those in the Zoho ecosystem. Although integrating most of them is a piece of cake, manual intervention is needed at times. Being able to automate

• User Emails Blocked

  Community: I keep running into issues where our users stop receiving notifications from CRM because their email addresses get blocked in on the backend some how. I reach out to support, they confirm, they fix, and we carry on, but then it happens again.

• Apple Messages for Business in Omnichannel communications?

  Hello, Apple launched "Apple Messages for Business" but Zoho CRM or Zoho Desk don't appear in the list of possible integrators. Zoho already promotes https://www.zoho.com/crm/omnichannel.html Omni Channel integration, but Apple Messages does not yet appear.

• Kaizen #140 - Integrating Blog feed scraping service into Zoho CRM Dashboard

  Howdy Tech Wizards! Welcome to a fresh week of kaizen. This week, we will look at how to create a dashboard widget that displays the most recent blog post of your preferred products/services, updated daily at a specific time. We will leverage the potential

• Schedule meeting monthly on a particular day

  Suppose I wanted to schedule HR meeting every month on the first Tuesday with each employee separately for 20 minutes each. How could I automate these type of meetings? And if Sunday occurs on the first Tuesday I would like to shift that meeting on next

• In ZohoCRM Dashboards - Editing Shown Columns on Drilldown of Components

  Hello! I'm working with some Dashboards inside of ZohoCRM. When creating a component (In this case, specifically a KPI Ranking Component), I'd like to customize which fields show when trying to drilldown. For example, when I click on one of the sales

• Multibrand Help Center - Share knowledge base catgories between multiple departments

  Hello, I would like to know if it is possible to share categories between multiple departments when the multi brand feature is enabled. So that then one portal exists per department, but certain categories are visible in multiple portals. After all, we

• Added Domain but SSL is not being set properly

  We added a Domain for our landing page and it pushed an SSL cert to it. The Cert is generated by LetsEncrypt, but it doesn't match our subdomain (i.e., it's just pointing to zohosites.com). How do we get the cert properly setup there?

• Zoho CRM Widget not displaying 2 related lists (JS)

  Okay so I basically have 2 relatedLists that I want to get and render: ZOHO.CRM.API.getRelatedRecords({ Entity: data.Entity, RecordID: data.EntityId, RelatedList: "Notes", page: 1, per_page: 200, }) ZOHO.CRM.API.getRelatedRecords({ Entity: data.Entity,

• Sharing Knowledge Base articles across multiple departments

  It would be useful to share some Knowledge Base articles across multiple departments where they are applicable, rather than having to go into other departments to find the article you're looking for. For example. Our reception uses the 'Admin' desk whereas our IT guys use the 'Support' desk, however both divisions would find KB articles about our company intranet useful. Reception does not have access to the support desk, so cannot see articles created in the Support KB. Perhaps you could install

• Iteration through a list - Coming up against a "Failure to update function" error

  Hi there! I've been attempting to get a deluge script working and am running into an error that I have been unable to resolve. The error I am getting is Failed to update function Error at line :18. Improper Statement. Error might be due to missing ';'

• KPI widget with percentage

  I'm trying to create a KPM widget that displays current performance as a percentage - something like the picture below. I've tried following the instructions at https://www.zoho.com/analytics/help/dashboard/kpi-widgets.html#chart but nothing ends up being

• Next Page