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How well do you know your customers? What are their greatest business challenges? What drives them? What challenges do they face on a daily basis?

If you do not know the answers to these questions, it is time you did some research.

The buyer personas you use as the foundation of your marketing efforts – i.e. the fictionalised representations of your ideal customers – should answer all of these questions, and you should know your customer inside out before they have even initiated contact with you.

The term Inbound Marketing was invented by HubSpot, and is now part of the marketing landscape. In a nutshell its about attracting potential customers to you, as opposed to outbound interruptive marketing techniques. 

Once engaged, through educational and thought leadership content, a key part of the inbound methodology is to provide further relevant information to potential customers to help them progress through to a closed deal.   

This part of the methodology is not ground breaking! In the past, sales have always nurtured prospects with information and content at various stages of the sales cycle until they are closed as customers, so what has changed?  

Well the buyers still need information at all stages of their journey before making a decision, but it is the buyer’s ability to access as much information as they like through the internet which is the major shift from the past. Buyers now have the upper hand they are no longer reliant on sales to provide information and can determine when they want to engage with sales, 

Inbound marketing delivers results that other marketing tactics just can't match.  There is great value in creating quality content that aligns with potential buyers’ interests, and then distributing that content through various online channels, such as blogs and social media, to attract potential consumers to your company.

Here are 4 key reasons why Inbound is crucial for a more successful business:

In today’s buyers’ market it is crucial to have an understanding of the processes the buyer goes through when making a decision. The buyers’ journey takes them through a number of stages and you need to ensure you are there to educate and provide the relevant resources and content your buyer needs as they move through the process.

Is your content marketing up to scratch? Many businesses are struggling with their content as it is almost entirely focused on the final purchase stage of the customer lifecycle. They focus on company information and product information and wrongly assuming that everyone is ready to make a purchase right there and then.  Whereas in fact statistics show that only about 4% of visitors to your website are actually ready to buy. 

The buyer has a lot more control in the modern sales process than ever before, undertaking a lot of their own research on the internet and through other means before contacting your company.

In fact 60% of buying process is done before the buyer even makes contact with your company.  

So it’s more critical than ever to thoroughly understand your target customers as your inbound marketing strategy needs to be developed with your target audience in mind.  Marketing is responsible for guiding the customers through the buying journey.  

Envisioning the type of person you are targeting and gaining a deeper level of insight into their goals, pains and motivations will help you develop a highly targeted and cohesive marketing strategy. Each persona will act differently and need different things at each stage of the buying process.

Figure out what your buyer needs help with, what challenges and problems are they looking to overcome and what sort of information and what content will be best suited for these Buyer Personas.