What links are there between inbound marketing and marketing automation?

26 Jun 2024

In the world of digital marketing, marketers apply different strategies to attract more and more visitors to a website. Indeed, for a brand, it is important to establish its online presence. To achieve this, it will be necessary to resort to "inbound marketing" and "marketing automation". What do these terms mean? What are their connections?

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is also known as incoming marketing. With this strategy, marketers must provide smart and relevant content. This will encourage visitors to come to a particular site. Once on the platform, they need to be converted into customers. This strategy is not the same as outbound marketing or mass marketing. Its goal is to seek out customers and meet them where they are. With inbound marketing, the quality of content plays an essential role.

When traditional marketing has proven ineffective, inbound marketing has taken over. Indeed, internet users are no longer convinced by the usual advertisements broadcast by the media. In their daily lives, consumers receive a large quantity of marketing messages and are less and less interested in these offers. They even tend to block advertisements that are considered too intrusive.

To better meet the expectations of current customers, inbound marketing has gradually imposed itself. This strategy is based on creating a personalized experience (based on the profile and behaviour of the consumer). With this strategy, content is published at the right moment and in the right place. The publication will be more relevant to the internet user.

Inbound marketing targets specific customers. Their profile has been determined in advance through personas. Internet users are directed towards products and services that they may find original and interesting.

As part of this marketing strategy, the methodology to follow is as follows:

Attract;
Convert;
Close;
Delight.

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What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation refers to the automation of certain regular and repetitive marketing tasks. This applies, for example, to sending emails, lead nurturing, contact segmentation, etc. This type of marketing involves automating actions and campaigns that help manage and generate potential customers. This strategy can be applied in both B2B and B2C contexts. It is used to analyze the effectiveness of established actions.

The main objective of marketing automation is to create, organise, and promote relevant content tailored to a specific target. To achieve this objective, it is possible to use forms and landing pages. With marketing automation, it is necessary to carry out qualification, lead scoring, and lead nurturing. It will then be essential to ensure that potential customers are well directed to the sales teams.

There are many actions that can be executed as part of marketing automation. This refers to automated solutions such as:

Scheduling posts on social media;
Defining blog publication times;
Qualifying leads (lead scoring);
Creating tasks for salespeople;
Tracking marketing campaigns, etc.

With marketing automation, it is possible to manage stages of inbound marketing, namely:

Reactivating cold leads;
Qualifying leads;
Lead nurturing;
Lead scoring and the alignment of sales and marketing.

Complementary techniques for generating traffic

It is important to keep in mind that inbound marketing and marketing automation are techniques that complement each other. The inbound marketing strategy begins by attracting a third party to a particular platform. As a visitor, this person becomes familiar with the brand, its services, and its products. They are converted into a lead and then into a customer. This requires personalizing the content and the approach. Inbound marketing is also concerned with customer retention. Once retained, customers will naturally become brand ambassadors.

Whatever the stage in the inbound marketing strategy, marketing automation plays an important role. It contributes to quickly increasing the conversion rate. It can help analyze visitor behaviour. The brand can offer tailored content based on its positioning.

Websites often encourage users to create an account and fill out a form with their personal data. By choosing this option, users can access additional services. With the information gathered and cookies, it is possible to access the history of actions taken on the visited pages with tracking tools. Marketing automation will be useful for analysing visitor behaviour.

Complementary techniques in converting visitors into customers

With the inbound marketing strategy, it is crucial to convert visitors into potential customers. It is necessary to offer content that is tailored to the visitor's needs or that provides relevant answers to their problems. Marketing automation will handle the management of contact forms, document storage, and the creation of landing pages. It allows for the automation of newsletter sending, as contacts are already recorded.

To facilitate customer conversion, it is important to qualify the lead. For this, it is necessary to distinguish between:

Hot leads: individuals genuinely interested in the offered service;
Cold leads: individuals who are not really ready to make a purchase.

Once the qualification stage is complete, it becomes easier to identify the real targets.

Marketing automation will help you optimize and automate certain marketing actions in your inbound strategy. Do you want to learn more about marketing automation? Are you looking for tools to automate certain marketing actions? Feel free to reach out to My Name Is Bond.

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