Why Is Social Media An Important Part Of Inbound Marketing?
If you are new to inbound marketing, then you might be wondering “Why is social media an important part of inbound marketing? “With different marketing channels available to use, should you focus on social media?
Different studies have proved that social media has become an excellent way to get maximum benefits from your inbound marketing efforts. With social media inbound marketing strategy, you can easily attract new customers as well as retain existing customers.
Using this, you can easily share and promote unique content created by inbound marketers on social media platforms. Now, let’s discuss some other major reasons to include social media in your inbound marketing.
What's Inside
- What is Inbound Marketing?
- Inbound Vs. Outbound Marketing
- What Are The Components Of An Inbound Marketing Campaign?
- Should you Really Go for Inbound Marketing?
- Is Social Media an Important Part of Inbound Marketing?
- What is Social Media Marketing?
- 7 Reasons Why Social Media is an Important Part of Inbound Marketing
What is Inbound Marketing?
In the simplest of terms, inbound marketing refers to the process of allowing potential customers to find your business in the easiest and most efficient way. It takes place way before a consumer purchases a good or service and usually plays to the first mover’s advantage.
This methodology in business is based on creating solid content ideas and customized experiences that can attract your target audience. Making contact with the consumer early on in the buying cycle can make you a brand preference which leads to further sales and an increase in revenue.
Inbound Vs. Outbound Marketing
Inbound marketing strategy is highly different from outbound marketing strategy, and We will be tracing some key differences between the two here:
Inbound Marketing Strategy | Outbound Marketing Strategy | |
Approach | Pull strategy | Push strategy |
Audience Target | Attracts potential customers by providing valuable content and experiences | Targets a broader audience through traditional advertising |
Communication | Two-way communication with customers | One-way communication from the company to the audience |
Lead Generation | Focuses on attracting and nurturing leads through content marketing, email marketing, SEO, social media, etc. | Emphasizes interrupting the audience with advertisements, cold calls, direct mail, etc. |
Cost Efficiency | Generally more cost-effective as it leverages digital platforms and content creation | Often more expensive due to paid advertising and production costs |
Trust Building | Builds trust and credibility by offering valuable information and addressing customer needs | Relies on persuasive tactics to capture attention and generate immediate responses |
Longevity | Provides long-term results as it focuses on building relationships and brand authority | Often yields short-term results that diminish once the marketing efforts stop |
Metrics | Emphasizes measuring engagement, conversion rates, and customer lifetime value | Focuses on metrics like reach, frequency, and immediate response rates |
Examples | Content marketing, SEO, social media engagement, email marketing | Television/radio ads, billboards, direct mail, telemarketing |
What Are The Components Of An Inbound Marketing Campaign?
Inbound marketing comes with a range of benefits to businesses and helps in increasing sales. Here are some of the essential aspects of a successful and sales-generating inbound marketing campaign:
- Content marketing which includes videos, blogs, checklists, and more
- Email marketing with an impactful email right into the mailboxes, more specifically for people who have opted to do so
- Search engine optimization so that buyers and consumers can catch your website and you have a higher Google search ranking
- Social media marketing techniques to garner interest in the brand and the products offered. These strategies target consumer behavior and use the same to increase sales.
- PPC for targeting specific keywords and search terms.
Should you Really Go for Inbound Marketing?
One of the most common questions among business owners is why inbound marketing is important. In simple words, this form of marketing focuses on effectively reaching potential customers.
It has three major stages, i.e., Attracts, Engage, and Delight. Different studies show more than 74 percent of marketers assume that it is a primary marketing approach and more than 61 percent of marketers use inbound marketing to boost their organic presence.
This is a long-term market strategy that can help your inbound and outbound marketing by generating quality leads. However, to get the best out of this practice, you should include social networking sites in your company’s inbound marketing strategy.
Is Social Media an Important Part of Inbound Marketing?
If you are new to the concept, then you might be wondering why is social media an important part of inbound marketing? With different marketing channels available in the market, should you focus on social media or not?
A range of studies have proved that social media has become an excellent way to generate revenue, and with some effort you can get maximum benefits from it. With a top social media inbound marketing strategy, you can easily attract new customers and retain the existing ones. Using these strategies, you can also share and promote unique content created by inbound marketers.
Moving on, let’s look at some other major reasons to include a social media network in your inbound marketing.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is all about the utilization of different social media platforms to get connected with different audiences to increase sales and build a brand while driving more traffic to your business website.
This social media strategy includes publishing unique and quality content on your company’s social media profiles, analyzing the results, getting engaged with the followers on different social media accounts, and running social media campaigns.
Social media and inbound marketing are relatively similar as inbound marketing also involves attracting customers through meaningful mediums, just like social media. So, to make your inbound marketing successful, you must leverage social media.
7 Reasons Why Social Media is an Important Part of Inbound Marketing
One of the primary aims of an inbound marketer is to attract, convert, delight, and retain customers. Besides, they also have to hunt for different customers and visitors to create more business opportunities.
Each social media platform has a unique audience, creating an opportunity to make your inbound social media marketing strategy successful. But before exploring the reasons for going forward with social media inbound marketing, let’s talk about what exactly is the concept.
1. Platforms Connect you to Target Audience
By providing informative and relevant content to your customers, you can develop robust customer relationships. Moreover, through your social media presence, you can also get feedback and information from different customers. Social media, Q&A, and other sites can also offer you various ideas to create content that will be relevant to your audience and increases social media engagement.
Furthermore, you can use different powerful social media monitoring tools that can help you in this process to increase social media engagement. With these tools, you can explore the relevant and highly-ranked keywords.
Once you have published the content on social media, using these tools, you can also monitor the performance of your content.
2. Helps in Content Promotion
With an effective social media promotion plan, attaining the desired goals for digital marketing will become easier for you. An effective promotion plan for social media must have the following aspects:
- Earned Media– The content your audience creates can help you promote yourself effectively.
- Owned Media– Content type that you will create yourself, like social media posts, blog posts, podcasts, and more.
- Paid Media– With this content, you will have to pay a certain amount for sponsored posts and ads.
3. Better Brand Awareness
Your brand awareness level can influence the customer’s decision on whether they should go for your brand or not.
Additionally, when it comes to expanding your brand awareness, you can always use social media. Plus, social media will bring direct traffic to your website by increasing search engine ranks and brand value over the different search engines.
Utilizing different social media channels like the Facebook page, Twitter page, and other outlets, you can easily get your brand in front of your target customers. Such target-driven practices will make it possible to nurture the customers throughout the sales process by actively engaging through the user’s mobile phone, as nowadays everything is just a click away.
4. Makes your Brand Relevant
Brand awareness greatly influences the brand authority of your business. When more people will discuss and share your business information and recommend your brand or products to others, it will lead to higher brand authority over the search engine. The website traffic will increase as well.
Additionally, most customers prefer to follow the recommendations and opinions of others. So, when a happy client shares a positive review about your brand/business, then the perception, as well as the authority of your brand, goes up instantly. As per studies, more than 86 percent of customers prefer a company personality that is honest and authentic.
So, by using social media in your strategy in the digital marketing process, you can boost your brand relevance, and authenticity in the market and help increase sales.
5. Better Customer Engagement and Brings New Business Ideas
Inbound social media strategy is primarily based on attracting, converting, and then engaging readers to bring in promoters, leads, and visitors. When you post valuable content, on your business social media profile, it will stay on your timeline for days- accumulating interest and traction.
It also gives your social media pages, an overall positive experience for the visitors to scroll through whenever they visit the page. Besides, the more your social media marketing reaches and gets audience likes, shares, or engages the posted content, the more people will eventually see it.
By listening to consumers, you will be able to explore new ideas and ways to expand your products and services line.
6. Helps In SEO
Do you know the way you use social media can greatly affect your overall SEO and the number of reaches to your target audience?
When you use social media to interact as well as promote your content, it increases the exposure level of your business.
Besides, experts and influencers will link to the content when your brand’s social media content marketing attains a higher level of credibility and authority. This increased authority will boost your overall search engine optimization and strengthen your social media presence.
7. Social Listening
Social listening is all about using different social media tools to find out what your existing and potential customers are talking about your brand. Through this, you will get to know what users are promoting and sharing.
Besides, social listening allows you to know their likes and dislikes and plan your inbound marketing strategies accordingly.
Understanding what customers are saying and how are people feeling about your brand and products will always be valuable data to make your inbound marketing successful.
Conclusion
When it comes to witnessing constant business growth, focusing on inbound marketing and social media is a great idea.
In today’s world, social media platforms, when used properly along with other digital marketing strategies, can help businesses market their services well. With these practices, you will enjoy better SEO, healthier customer satisfaction, increased traffic, and enhanced brand loyalty.
A strong recommendation would be to hire an expert to get the social media marketing and to get inbound marketing done smoothly. Hopefully, now that you understand the reasons and some top benefits of using social media, you will give it a try.
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