Major Developments Major Developments by Calendar Year

Inbound marketing deals with attracting warm leads (potential to turn into sales) in contrast to outbound marketing which deals with cold leads. It mainly uses interesting content to acquire customers. Inbound marketing will be advantageous to companies that have tight marketing budgets. It offers a unique combination of more efficiency at a relatively less expenditure.

Inbound marketing comprises various activities like search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, blogging and social media marketing. SEO deals with working out on your website so that you get better rankings in search results, which is likely to increase online visibility. Content marketing involves various activities like creating useful and unique content, providing articles, white papers, blogs etc. Content is used as a sales pitch to a certain extent by providing value to customers.

Process of inbound marketing
There are different stages in inbound marketing which help in giving a structure to your marketing activities. It involves four to five stages. The first stage is to design a strategy that attracts website traffic, the second is to convert website visitors into leads, the third is to convert leads into sales and the final stage is to measure the results and accordingly redesign the strategy or take corrective actions.

Advantages of inbound marketing
Cost effective
Inbound marketing is completely done online, which offers many chances to reduce your marketing costs. In traditional marketing, targeting specific customers is difficult. But in inbound marketing you can easily target a specific section of customers, so you will spend only on those online users who are more likely to become your customers. As you do not depend on mass media for your marketing activities inbound marketing saves a considerable amount.

Availability of measurement tools
Another most likely advantage of inbound marketing is that you can easily measure the effectiveness of marketing campaign. This means, you can get a clear picture on return on investment. You can measure change in the traffic to your website using analytical tools. Doing these measurements and analysis will help in knowing which marketing activities are working and which are not. This will help in designing new strategies which will further improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your marketing activities.

Interactive communication
With the help of articles, you will be able to attract online users to your website. Once the users feel that the information is helpful they start interacting with you by posting comments, sending mails, etc. When the communication becomes interactive, it is likely to lead to customer engagement which is important to make customers interested in your products. You can also use social media to communicate with customers as they get a chance to directly interact with you. This helps in building good relationships with your customers which is very important in any business.

Value to customers through rich content
The rich information you provide through inbound marketing not just prompts customers to buy your products, but gives them valuable information they are looking for and thus adds value to your service. You provide value to customers and in turn you get benefits in the form of quality leads. By providing good content, you can show your expertise which could make your customers trust you as an expert in your niche.

These advantages show the importance of inbound marketing that not only helps businesses reduce their marketing budgets but provides effective results when implemented properly.
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