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If your business is active online, you know traditional marketing just doesn’t cut it. Gone are the days of print and radio ads, at least in the case of an ecommerce store. These traditional marketing tactics were, and still can be, wildly successful. But, they aren’t really suited for online businesses alone.

Instead, you need to look to the future of marketing in the digital age. Although inbound marketing has been around for years, many business owners are just starting to catch on. In 2005, Hubspot’s CEO Brian Halligan coined the term “inbound marketing.” This was around the same time marketing superpower Seth Godin wrote about “permissions marketing.” Both of these terms are basically the same thing: using good content to attract customers. This sharply contrasts with what’s known as “outbound marketing,” or “interruption marketing,” where you beg for and buy business using unsolicited content.

Since spammy email blasts, cold-calling, and telemarketing are things of the past, it’s time to move into the present. Creating really great content like blog posts, eBook, newsletters, videos, and more are how you get in front of customers. From there, your content has to be good enough to bring customers in. Let’s explore some of the best practices of inbound marketing that you can apply to your business. Applying some solid inbound marketing tactics can really, really help you in the long run.

Attract Customers To Your Site

It may seem like an outrageous idea that users will just land on your site of their own accord. But, with really good content, this can happen. As mentioned, inbound marketing is all about using really good content to bring users in, rather than having to beg for them. For small businesses, this may be easier said than done. We understand the time constraints and lack of resources that some small businesses may face. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t create really great content.

Here, you can start by focusing your efforts on writing some really great blog posts for your site. Users usually want to read and learn about products, or services, straight from the source, rather than from bloggers or reviews. By combining really informative blog posts with helpful information about your products, users will naturally start to come to your site. Regular blogging helps to establish your business as a real brand, and an authority in your niche. This is half the battle to gain visibility on the web, and you can win that battle if you start with content.

Once you’ve gotten the hang of regular blogging, you can focus some of your resources on producing other types of content. It’s best to spend time researching, brainstorming, and planning your content before it even sees the light of day. Preparing your content, and the strategy you’ll use to market it, will ensure it’s more successful in the end. Expanding content past just blog posts into things like videos, eBooks, or infographics can help to bring in different types of customers that you may not have been able to reach before.

The Buyer’s Journey

You know you need really good content to attract users to your site. But, you also need to know who your target market is, and who you’re creating this great content for. A huge part of inbound marketing is to create buyer personas that reflect the demographics, interests, and characteristics of your ideal customer. Creating buyer personas can be a long process. So, for business owners with little time, you can start by simply identifying who you’re selling to.

Start by looking at your demographics reports in Google Analytics. If you don’t have this tracking enabled, we recommend doing so. Demographics reports give you a good idea of who is visiting your site, in terms of gender, location, age, and some insight into their interests. Even further, look at your Facebook and Twitter insights. Usually, your business page dashboard gives you a peek into who’s interacting with your content the most.

After you’ve nailed down your target market, you can use this to create content tailored to customers for the best results. With this insight, you’ll be able to use the language they use, and write about topics they’re concerned about. Having a really good understanding of the customers that interact with your site and your social profiles will only help your content be more successful. You’ll be able to make more educated choices in brainstorming and planning meetings, and produce content with more focused intention.

Once you know who you’re marketing for, you can move on to the when and how. Deciding when and how to market your content is equally as important as who you’re marketing to. In inbound marketing, the buyer’s journey is a huge marketing step. The buyer’s journey is broken down into three stages that consumers usually fall into when interacting with a site:

AWARENESS > CONSIDERATION > DECISIONBuyers tend to move through this journey in a fluid way, bouncing back and forth between stages, and sometimes never advancing. It’s important to be aware of where your customers are landing in this journey, especially if you send them content. For the awareness stage, content like blog posts really work well. As they move to the decision stage, content like eBooks and newsletters come in handy to sway them towards a conversion. This may seem like a complicated process. But, all it really takes is listening to your customers and matching their needs.

Delighting Customers

Technically, “delight” is the last phase of the inbound methodology. But, we believe this is the one phase that needs to be talked about the most. As a business owner, your main concern should be to delight your customers; yes, even above conversions. Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. Without them, you wouldn’t be in business. In that case, you need to make sure they are blown away by not only your products, but your commitment to them.

You shouldn’t close the book on your customers once they make a purchase. With inbound marketing, it’s not that simple, and for a good reason. One of the most valuable, and cost effective, marketing tools you can create are brand evangelists. Brand evangelists are customers that love your products and service so much that they are compelled to talk about it on their own. These delighted customers will tell their friends and followers about great service, but only if you deliver.

Creating brand evangelists isn’t hard, if excellent customer service is simply a part of your business. Customers should be delighted after every interaction they have with your business – from a quick visit to your site all the way to communications after a purchase. If you’re committed to your customers by providing great content and interactions, delighting them should come easy to you.

While diving into inbound marketing can be a lengthy process, choosing what inbound tactics work best for your individual business needs can be a quick change. Really, most inbound marketing practices are easy to apply if you set your sites on great content and good customer experience. Marketing isn’t hard once you focus on what works for you. Creating content with users in mind, and doing everything you can to delight them at every interaction, isn’t just a best practice, it’s what works. Think about big brands. How do you think they became so successful? Simply by being the best they could be, at every turn. If you take what you love from inbound marketing to heart, your customer will love you for it.