If sales through disruptive methods such as cold calls, spam emails, and television and radio ads, lost their effectiveness with consumers over time, what was the solution that marketers found?
A new sales methodology that will promote a spontaneous and less invasive purchase. Inbound marketing. Its foundations and pillars are the result of that great effort to find a friendly solution to this problem and today, it is one of the most used sales strategies in both B2B and B2C markets.
Inbound marketing, like any strategy that is designed with clear objectives, has fundamentals that characterize it at any time, especially if it is put into practice under the consolidation of a company.
That is why an inbound company is one that relies on inbound marketing to attract, convert, close and delight its customers successfully, with the aim of breaking with that sales paradigm that, to the satisfaction of consumers, has completely changed.
In this sense, if you are an entrepreneur and you decided to build an inbound company but you still don’t know how to achieve it, congratulations! You came to the right post. Below we will explain to you what the fundamentals and pillars of inbound marketing are so that you can clarify all your doubts and be able to apply each of the following recommendations.
The great advantage of these pillars is that in essence, they can be adapted to any business model, product and/or service, so we invite you to continue reading and delve a little deeper into this digital marketing philosophy.
Have a business culture
Hubspot, a pioneer in inbound marketing, points out that a company’s culture is an environment that defines and informs how employees should act when interacting with consumers and how the company hires, retains and grows its work teams.
In other words, business culture is what identifies the way a company is. It is a comprehensive and personalized philosophy that represents an organization in the face of problems, opportunities, management situations, and adaptation to changes and requirements, which are internalized in the form of beliefs to be transmitted and taught to new members. as a way of thinking, living and acting.
Among the foundations and pillars of inbound, business culture stands out as one of the most important, since it is consolidated as a vital element within any strategy within this discipline. Mainly because under this concept, the bases and values of an organization are structured.
Without this first step, how could you know what you want to communicate? An organization cannot devise strategies to attract and capture new customers without even knowing itself, that is, without knowing what its values, goals, visions, missions and objectives are within the short, medium and long term.
In this way, having a business culture is the first step to consolidate your inbound company and define the basis of how you want to project your business model and the offer of services and/or products that you want to enter the market.
Know your buyer persona
A buyer persona is a semi-fictional profile that is used to understand in depth how the mentality of your potential clients works. Specify the age, profession, tastes, concerns and needs of your ideal buyers. It is a way to capture the characteristics that a person must have to connect emotionally (because they like it) and rationally (because they need it) with your value proposition.
Knowing your buyer persona will allow you to more precisely know what type of content to create, in what style to do it, and in what format it is best to publish it. In itself, it works as an essential tool to take advantage of the process of creating and distributing a particular content.
Being a main tool of inbound marketing, it is also part of the foundations and pillars of an inbound company. How to attract and make your consumers fall in love, if you don’t even know them? This is where understanding your buyer persona becomes a first step to direct your marketing strategies towards this philosophy, which seeks to focus on customer needs above corporate or sales needs since the former will attract spontaneously to the second.
Devise content for each stage of the buyer journey
The buyer journey is a systematic process that consumers experience before deciding to purchase a product or service. It basically consists of three stages. recognition, consideration and decision. Each of these stages requires specific content that successfully guides consumers through this process, that is, content that allows them to recognize their problems and needs that can then direct them to the solution and, therefore, the acquisition of your product. product or service. This is useful content that should provide value to your consumers.
Knowing what stage of the buyer’s journey your consumers are in is important to know what content is most appropriate for them, since in the inbound marketing methodology content plays a very important role, which is why it is a key foundation for any inbound company. must take into consideration.
Educate over selling
Finally, one of the most important fundamentals when consolidating an inbound company is to understand that educating is much more important than selling. Just as we mentioned at the beginning of the article, consumers got tired of those advertisements that only had the intention of selling and carried them out in an invasive way. With access to the Internet, it was much easier for people to educate themselves on topics of interest to them and begin to empower themselves as buyers who know what they like and what they don’t.
So giving them knowledge that would allow them to grow both personally and professionally became a perfect formula to make sales a process that also exchanges knowledge and learning experience. The lead magnet is a great practice within inbound marketing that connects with this foundation.
The fundamentals and pillars of an inbound business, in short, consist of focusing on the needs of your audience above anything else, since they are the spinal cord within your business model.
