What are the links between inbound marketing and marketing automation?

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is also known as inbound marketing. With this strategy, marketers must offer intelligent and relevant content. This will entice visitors to come to a particular site. Once they are on the platform, they need to be converted into customers. This strategy is not the same as outbound marketing or mass marketing. Its objective is to seek out customers and meet them. With inbound marketing, the quality of the content plays an essential role.

When traditional marketing has failed, inbound marketing has taken over. Internet users are no longer convinced by the usual media advertising. In their daily lives, consumers receive a large number of marketing messages and are less and less interested in these offers. They even tend to block ads that are considered too intrusive. 

In order to better respond to the expectations of today's customers, inbound marketing has gradually gained ground. This strategy is based on the creation of a personalised experience (according to the profile and behaviour of the consumer). With this strategy, content is published at the right time and in the right place. The publication will be more relevant to the Internet user. 

Inbound marketing is aimed at target customers. Their profile has been determined beforehand by means of personas. Internet users are directed towards products and services that they may find original and interesting. 

The methodology for this marketing strategy is as follows: 

• Attracting ; 
• Convert ; 
• Sign ; 
• Build loyalty.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation refers to the automation of certain regular and repetitive marketing tasks. This applies, for example, to sending e-mails, lead nurturing, contact segmentation, etc. This type of marketing consists of automating actions and campaigns that help to manage and generate leads. This strategy can be applied in both B2B and B2C. It is used to analyse the effectiveness of established actions. 

The main objective of marketing automation is to create, organise and promote relevant content tailored to a specific target. Forms and landing pages can be used to achieve this objective. With marketing automation, qualification, lead scoring and lead nurturing are necessary. It is then necessary to check that potential customers are directed to the sales team. 

There are many actions that can be carried out in the context of marketing automation. This refers to automated solutions such as : 

• Planning of publications on social networks; 
• The definition of the hours of publication of the blog ;
• Qualification of prospects (lead scoring);
• The creation of tasks for sales staff ;
• Monitoring of marketing campaigns, etc. 

With marketing automation, it is possible to deal with the steps of inbound marketing, namely : 

• Re-activation of cold leads;
• Lead qualification ;
• Lead nurturing ;
• Lead scoring and sales-marketing alignment.

Complementary techniques to generate traffic

Keep in mind that inbound marketing and marketing automation are complementary techniques. The inbound marketing strategy starts by attracting a third party to a particular platform. As a visitor, this person becomes familiar with the brand, its services and products. They are converted into a lead and then into a customer. This will require a personalised content and approach. Inbound marketing also focuses on customer loyalty. Once they are loyal, customers will naturally become brand ambassadors. 

Whatever the stage in the inbound marketing strategy, marketing automation plays an important role. It helps to increase the conversion rate quickly. It can help analyse visitor behaviour. The brand will be able to propose adapted content according to its positioning. 

Websites often encourage users to create an account and fill in a form with their personal data. By choosing this option, users can access additional services. With the information obtained and the cookies, it is possible to access the history of actions taken on the pages visited with tracking tools. Marketing automation will be useful for the analysis of visitor behaviour. 

Complementary techniques in converting visitors into customers

With the inbound marketing strategy, it is crucial to convert visitors into potential customers. It is necessary to propose content that is adapted to the visitor's needs or that offers answers relevant to their problem. Marketing automation will take care of managing contact forms, storing documents and creating landing pages. It allows you to automate the sending of newsletters, because the contacts are already listed. 

To promote customer conversion, the lead must be qualified. To do this, we must distinguish between : 

• Hot leads: people who are genuinely interested in the proposed service; 
• Cold leads: individuals who are not really ready to make a purchase. 
  

Once the qualification stage is complete, it is easier to identify the actual targets. 

Marketing automation will help you optimise and automate certain marketing actions in your inbound strategy. Do you want to know more about marketing automation? Are you looking for tools to automate certain marketing actions? Don't hesitate to contact My Name Is Bond.