October 6, 2022
3 Minutes

Consumers are sick of ads and ad-blocking softwares now give them the ability to avoid traditional digital ads. In the constantly evolving technology landscape, marketers who continue to rely exclusively on traditional outbound marketing methods should expect rising customer acquisition costs resulting in lower returns on investment. If that sounds like gibberish, don’t worry, we’ll start with the basics.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Great question! Inbound marketing is the process of building meaningful connections with consumers by providing them with valuable content and experiences. The inbound method puts an emphasis on valuing and empowering people at all stages of their customer journey.

This article from Hubspot breaks inbound marketing into three steps:

1. Attract… your target audience with content and conversations that are valuable and tailored to your audience’s interests. In this step, use ads, videos, blogs, social media, and a content strategy.
2. Engage… people by providing insights and solutions that connect with their problems and goals. In this step, use lead flows, email marketing, lead management, conversational bots, and marketing automation tools.
3. Delight… your customers by empowering them, with help and support, to find success with their purchase. In this step, use smart content, email marketing, conversations inbox, attribution reporting, and marketing automation tools.

Inbound Marketing is Effective – Here’s Why

Inbound marketing is one of the most efficient ways to increase return on investment (ROI) by reducing customer acquisition cost (CAC). Customer acquisition cost is exactly what it sounds like – the amount of money spent, on average, for every new customer. In general, companies aim for high ROI, because it indicates healthy marketing efforts, and therefore a healthier company. This is why CAC matters so much – because a high CAC will decrease ROI.

Inbound marketing allows brands to gain awareness more easily than outbound marketing, because customers want to pay attention to engaging content. Creating valuable content drives organic website traffic, builds brand trust and credibility, and improves conversion rates. Additionally, an inbound marketing strategy attracts the ‘right’ people to your brand. Companies can build momentum by reaching qualified prospects who engage with their content and continuously help to expand the brand’s audience.

I recommend taking a look at this article for a deeper dive into CAC and ROI.

Don’t Forget About Your Customers

A successful inbound marketing strategy relies on understanding and connecting with your customers. People look for brands that provide valuable content and unique experiences. Above all, they expect personalization. This is why the customer is the most important element of any inbound marketing effort. Creating a consumer persona for your ideal customer will give you a good basis for building a campaign with tailored content.

Understanding your customers will allow you to build strong connections, solve problems, and provide value. Check out this article for some really interesting research about customer ad preferences and inbound marketing.

Spotify Understands the Benefits of Inbound Marketing

Spotify is a great example of a company that benefits from using an inbound marketing strategy. Access to a large amount of data on its users gives Spotify an advantage in creating personalized content. Spotify uses a highly-personalized email marketing strategy which provides users with information about events related to their favorite artists.

My personal favorite Spotify campaign is the “Wrapped” campaign every December, which gives users an entertaining summary of their music listening habits during the year. It’s successful because users find it valuable and entertaining, it’s personalized to each user, and it always goes viral on social media. By sharing their Wrapped summaries online, current users advertise Spotify to prospective customers for free.

The results? Over 90 million people engaged with Spotify Wrapped in 2020, according to this article. Additionally, the popularity of the campaign led to a 21% increase in app downloads in the first week of December, 2020.

Still Not Convinced?

Seriously?! I find that hard to believe. If you want to learn more about inbound marketing, I recommend listening to this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast on Spotify. It has a great interview with Nicholas Holland, Hubspot’s GM of Marketing and VP of Product, about inbound marketing and digital marketing trends to expect in 2023.