Unravelling the Power of Inbound Marketing
Unravelling the Power of Inbound Marketing
As Marketers, you are always looking at unravelling the Power of Inbound Marketing. Inbound marketing is a strategy that attracts potential customers by generating brand awareness through thoughtfully crafted online content. This approach encompasses various tactics, including mobile-friendly brochures, blog posts, event promotions, and social media engagement, among others.
The Rise of Inbound Marketing
The increasing reliance on the internet for information access and exploration has paved the way for a new approach to sales conversions. Companies now have a better understanding of customer needs, enabling them to make more informed decisions. By providing valuable information on websites, businesses can deliver a gratifying user experience, which ultimately benefits their products and services.
Traditional internet advertising has become less effective due to the widespread use of ad-blocking software; approximately 47% of global internet users have such software installed. By contrast, content that incorporates audio, video, and infographics is more impactful and engaging.
Inbound marketing’s success lies in its foundation: SEO and content marketing. This strategy increases website traffic, generates qualified leads, bolsters a company’s reputation, and more. It enables customers to engage with businesses on their terms while fostering relationships and guiding leads through the sales funnel.
Inbound Marketing Components
The following elements are essential to inbound marketing:
- Compelling landing pages
- SEO-friendly website pages
- Visually appealing emails
- E-books
- Blog posts
- Free guides
- Viral marketing and videos
- Webinars
- Social media campaigns
- Surveys
- Whitepapers
- Public speaking engagements
Advantages of Inbound Marketing Software:
- Providing accurate information
- Representing the company effectively
- Enhancing content relevance for searchability
- Engaging with targets individually
- Monitoring and targeting customer behavior and journey
- Building brand and fostering brand preference
- Attracting potential customers
- Maximizing customer value
- Conducting thorough analysis
- Ensuring business sustainability
- Enhancing customer service
- Reducing conversion costs
Who Stands to Gain from Inbound Marketing?
Both B2B and B2C businesses can benefit significantly from inbound marketing. The positive influence on decision-making and the extensive reach of inbound marketing make it a worthwhile investment.
Key Considerations for an Inbound Marketing Strategy:
- Search engine optimization
- Enhancing crawlability
- Developing target personas
- Crafting relevant and engaging content
- Focusing on specific keywords
- Boosting brand awareness
Why is Inbound Marketing Essential?
Why is Inbound Marketing Crucial?
With an astounding 3.5 billion daily searches on Google, it’s a given that potential customers are actively seeking information. Typically, users click on the top three organic search results.
Inbound marketing can boost your visibility on search engine result pages, whether your customer base is local or global. For brick-and-mortar businesses, customers often research online before visiting a nearby store. For online enterprises, inbound marketing tools present a significant opportunity for conversion. About 70% of consumers prefer learning about products and services through online content rather than traditional advertising.
Approximately 65% of consumers watch marketing videos, and nearly 96% of buyers desire more content from industry leaders. This highlights the growing demand for companies to participate in inbound marketing.
It’s important to note that 90% of people searching online have already made a decision, leaving you a small window to sway them regarding a product or service.
Companies require long-lasting, cost-effective marketing solutions to tap into new markets, explore them, and remain competitive. Traditional marketing activities fall short in achieving this, hence the need for inbound marketing.
Adoption of marketing automation software among large enterprises and SMEs is on the rise and is projected to grow continuously. Presently, companies allocate around 34% of their budgets to inbound marketing initiatives.
Top Inbound Marketing Software The following tools are popular for inbound marketing:
- HubSpot
- Maropost
- Semrush
- Jumplead
- Marketo
- Pardot
- AdRoll
- Xtensio
- ClickMeeting
- Unbounce
- Quora
- CoSchedule
- Hotjar
An Overview of the Top Tools:
- HubSpot Ideal for small, medium, and large businesses.
HubSpot is a comprehensive, scalable marketing platform with an extensive feature set to execute all marketing tasks. This tool is widely utilized in Asia, Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, and Latin America.
Features:
- Marketing automation
- Lead management
- Calls-to-action
- CRM integration
- Website SEO
Verdict: HubSpot is an excellent choice for newcomers looking to unravelling the power of Inbound Marketing. It automates key repetitive tasks and consolidates all data in one place for in-depth analysis. HubSpot ensures data security with encryption and multi-factor authentication.
Price: HubSpot Marketing Hub offers three pricing plans: Starter (starting at $45/month), Professional (starting at $800/month), and Enterprise (starting at $3,200/month). A free trial or demo is available.
- Maropost Ideal for medium-sized and large enterprises.
Maropost is a platform that automates your marketing efforts across various channels. It enables users to launch data-driven email marketing campaigns that significantly enhance open and conversion rates. Maropost also features an acquisition builder to find and add new contacts to your marketing database.
Features:
- Audience segmentation
- Custom forms, surveys, and contact lists
- Multi-channel engagement
- Data-driven email marketing
Verdict: Maropost is highly recommended for its automation and data-driven marketing capabilities. The platform seamlessly automates marketing efforts across social media, emails, SMS, and the web.
Price:
- Essential: $251/month
- Professional: $764/month
- Enterprise: $1,529/month
Top of Form
Semrush Ideal for small, medium, and large businesses. Semrush enhances online visibility through content marketing and digital marketing. Businesses need tools to create, manage, and measure campaigns and their outcomes. With data from over 140 countries, Semrush is an excellent tool for SEO and PPC campaigns, and it allows client-specific report automation.
Features:
- Advertising Research
- In-depth link analysis
- Keyword research
- Traffic analytics
- Organic research
Verdict: Over 3 million marketing professionals worldwide trust Semrush. With its 30 tools for comprehensive keyword, content, and market research, you can devise engaging marketing strategies.
Price: Semrush offers three pricing plans: Pro ($119.95/month), Guru ($229.95/month), and Business ($449.95/month). A free trial is available.
Jumplead Ideal for small and medium businesses, including startups. Jumplead is a cloud-based marketing automation tool tailored for small and medium-sized enterprises and B2Bs. It facilitates interaction with prospects to enhance the sales cycle and marketing process. Monitoring changes in the sales lifecycle can lead to accurate predictions and conversions.
Features:
- Lead generation
- Lead nurturing
- Live chat & messaging leads
- Visitor identification
- WordPress integration
Verdict: Jumplead offers excellent features at a low cost, making it suitable even for small businesses. It may be slow for handling large databases. Powerful B2B insights and a comprehensive feature set make Jumplead an attractive option compared to similarly priced products.
Price: Jumplead provides four pricing plans: Solo ($49/month), Starter ($99/month), Pro ($199/month), and Enterprise ($299/month). Additional Enterprise plans are also available.
Marketo Ideal for small and medium-sized enterprises. Marketo enables efficient targeting of the right customers. It is a top-notch tool for social media and third-party integrations. Location tracking allows focusing on demographically diverse prospects and customers.
Features:
- Data import
- Multi-channel marketing
- Real-time data
- Drag & drop interface
- Campaign management & analysis
Verdict: Marketo boasts unparalleled workflow flexibility, robust lifecycle, and score management solutions. Some users find it complex to use or set up email marketing campaigns. It is an all-in-one tool for web ads, mobile ads, email marketing, and more.
Price: Marketo offers four pricing plans: Select, Prime, Ultimate, and Enterprise. Prices depend on database size. A product tour is available, and you can request a quote for pricing details.
Pardot Ideal for small, medium, and large businesses. Pardot offers an excellent email design interface with pre-built templates. This tool simplifies scheduling and running campaigns and enables marketing automation through various integrations. It also supports working with data imported from other software.
Features:
- Custom data fields
- File hosting
- Google Adwords and Webinar integration
- SEO keyword monitoring
- Lead deduplication
Verdict: Pardot’s user-friendly UX, straightforward menu structure, and visitor activity tracking capabilities make it a worthwhile investment. With powerful automation features, it is ideal for ongoing digital marketing efforts.
Price: Pardot provides four pricing plans: Growth ($1,250/month), Plus ($2,500/month), Advanced ($4,000/month), and Premium ($15,000/month). A demo is available upon request.
AdRoll Ideal for small, medium, and large businesses. AdRoll allows you to set a daily budget for campaigns and attract more website visitors. Flexible product segmentation helps group products and serve customers better. A variety of advertising templates simplify the process.
Features:
- Campaign management
- Reporting & statistics
- Real-time data
- Measuring marketing impact
- Automatic optimization
Xtensio Ideal for small, medium, and large businesses.
Xtensio is a versatile platform with a user-friendly interface. The complimentary account allows you to create user personas, one-pagers, and more, giving you a taste of the platform’s capabilities. Image modification is made easy by simply copying URLs to resize.
Features:
- Real-time collaboration
- Save & share templates
- SSL encryption and backups
- Media Library
- Design Sell Sheets
Verdict: The free plan is limited; you need to pay to download templates. Users find it costly compared to the features provided. The tool is well-organized with essential features, but pricing might be a concern for smaller businesses.
Price: Xtensio offers a free plan, along with Personal ($8/month), Business ($10/seat/month), and Agency (request a quote) plans. These prices are for annual billing.
ClickMeeting Ideal for small, medium, and large businesses.
ClickMeeting is an online audio and video webinar platform suitable for businesses of all sizes. It offers insights on attendee numbers, the devices used to access webinars, and average webinar ratings.
Features:
- Webinar & attendee statistics
- Interface customization
- Whiteboard
- Webinar monitoring
- Automated webinars
Verdict: This reliable tool has 147,498 satisfied customers across 111 countries. The insights help improve webinars, live presentations, polls, and surveys. No installation is required, and its modern interface makes it easy to use.
Price: ClickMeeting offers a 30-day free trial. There are three pricing plans: Live ($25/month), Automated ($40/month), and Enterprise (request a quote).
Unbounce Ideal for small and medium businesses.
Unbounce features pre-designed elegant templates for faster creation of responsive landing pages. There’s no need to build landing pages from scratch. The platform offers quick page loading, full-screen backgrounds, and dynamic text replacement to streamline your work.
Features:
- Real-time editing
- Drag & drop landing page builder
- Multiple client management
- IP filters
- Widgets
Verdict: Unbounce is essential for landing page optimization. However, scheduling content for repetitive actions isn’t possible, requiring manual updates for even minor changes.
Price: Unbounce offers a 14-day free trial. Pricing plans include Launch ($80/month), Optimize ($120/month), Accelerate ($200/month), and Scale ($300/month). Annual billing plans are also available.
Quora Ideal for small, medium, and large businesses.
Quora is a vast platform where people can ask questions and receive answers from multiple users on various topics, products, services, or anything relevant to your business. Target the right audience with questions that can potentially convert them into customers. Buyers can find answers that aid in decision-making.
Features:
- Post reviews
- Ask and answer questions
- Showcase expertise
- Attract customers
- Expand customer base
Verdict: Quora can help create brand awareness and grow your email database. Engage people in contests and promote products effortlessly. The new data can be useful for email drip campaigns.
CoSchedule Ideal for small and medium businesses.
CoSchedule simplifies article publishing and is a comprehensive tool for active organizations of any size. The calendar auto-populates, making work allocation and planning easy. It serves as a social media marketing and collaboration tool.
Features:
- Milestone tracking
- Portfolio & resource management
- Gantt charts
- Customizable templates
- Drive traffic
Verdict: This reliable tool has over 7,000 customers worldwide. It provides traffic metrics for blog posts on social media platforms and can be used as a Twitter & LinkedIn post planner. Access social messages for each blog post directly in the WordPress dashboard.
Schedule offers a free trial. The Marketing Calendar is available for $29 per user per month. You can request a quote for the Marketing Suite.
Hotjar Ideal for small, medium, and large businesses as well as freelancers.
Hotjar offers excellent features for creating surveys, including mobile surveys. Discover which areas of your website engage visitors and gather actionable insights to address problematic areas.
Features:
- Customer survey URLs
- Visualize user behavior
- Video recording and filtering capabilities
- Customer journey mapping
- Web analytics
Verdict: Hotjar allows you to track funnel performance and offers superior features compared to competing software. It captures videos of user mouse clicks and identifies points of disinterest that cause users to leave the website. You can also create pop-up surveys on specific pages. Hotjar is perfect for an in-depth study of user behavior and acquiring more customers.
Price: Hotjar offers a free trial. Its basic plan is available for free, with additional plans including Plus ($39 per month), Business ($99 per month), and Scale ($389 per month).
Conclusion
Innovate your inbound marketing strategies for business growth by exploring new tools and techniques. Implementing new tools can strengthen your marketing department and improve the effectiveness of any techniques that yield reliable results.
Inbound marketing software ultimately increases your brand’s visibility and credibility, driving more traffic to your site.
Based on the reliability factor, the top 5 inbound marketing software tools are worth a try. We recommend HubSpot for large enterprises, Marketo for medium and small enterprises, and Hotjar for businesses with specific requirements like surveys.