Every company, regardless of the industry, assortment and number of employees, has at least one common element. It is the customer who is the main component of the company’s financial success. No wonder you strive for his interest every day! It is an extreme offer that meets expectations, looking for the most satisfactory solutions, hundreds of e-mails and hours of telephone calls … A person can get tired just reading, let alone talking about action!

However, when the transaction is finalized or a positive opinion is received – fanfares resound in the ears, and the corks pop out of the champagne bottles by themselves. Could the celebration be performed more often? Yes it can. What to do to make it happen? Know who the recipients of your products or services are. Personalize messages and advertising messages, and then collect information on why customers decide or NOT to use your suggestions. On this basis, you can build really solid foundations for sales and image!

Worth remembering … If you want the best tips on how to refine your offer or service, ask your customers for advice. Nobody will be a more valuable signpost for you!

Buyer Persona – definition

If you want to be effective in a business environment, you need to be familiar with maps. And if you don’t have them – invest in creating them. One of the first materials enabling efficient navigation through company processes will be the definition of your client’s profile.

Who is the Buyer Persona?

This is a fictional person who personifies the typical audience of your content. The features included are determined on the basis of the analysis of demographic and geographic data, monitoring of online behavior, information obtained through surveys and direct interviews. It is taking a closer look at all the behaviors and purchasing decisions of our customers in order to divide them into stages of the entire decision-making process.

Buyer Personas are not the same as the Ideal Customer profiles, but they do use this useful information base. It supplements it with additional data:
– Recipient’s expectations and selection criteria.
– Problems encountered on the purchasing path.
– Benefits will receive.
– The shopping paths he follows before he makes a decision.

Buyer Personas are not customers either. For now, these are people interested in your offer. To convince them to accept it, we need to clarify the habits, needs and values that determine their positive purchasing decision. It is worth mentioning here that the phrase “by them” may not be right at all!

Very often, people considering the purchase of a good, the price of which will significantly reduce the budget (company or home) and affect the daily functioning, ask a loved one for advice. Or they depend on the approval of the supervisor. So we are dealing with a so-called purchasing committee. Creating a navigation map and clarifying the Buyer Personas will allow us to develop communication and a list of arguments that will be key at the last stage, i.e. closing the transaction.

As we read on the Prowly websites, when creating a purchasing persona, it is necessary to establish:
– What is the most important from the point of view of our recipient.
– What motivates him to make a decision.
– What do they want to achieve by deciding on our product or service.
– What can be a barrier to the relationship with the brand.
– What criteria are taken into account when making binding instructions.

This will allow us to better meet the expectations and respond with a personalized offer to the needs of a potential customer. Sounds like more than half the battle!

When creating a Buyer Personas, do not focus on the division into segments (taking demographic data as a distinguishing feature), but on how and why the customer buys a specific product. A common mistake that people make is over-focusing on who the audience is. However, it must not be forgotten that it is also about why he chooses us.

How many person do you need to clarify the purchasing process? There is no clear answer to this question. However, it is worth considering whether you will have the processing capacity to implement separate marketing strategies for several separate people. That’s quite a hint, isn’t it?

In addition, there is a doubt as to whether each market segment really needs to be distinguished. It may turn out that recipients from different segments have the same purchasing habits or motivations when making decisions. Then you don’t have to treat them separately.

Good to know… It may turn out that your product or service reaches a very wide group. Then you will probably need to create several Buyer Personas. However, do not try to be for everyone – otherwise you may end up counterproductive. So just “change to small”.

Answer before your client asks

We already know who the Buyer Persona is. Now it is worth considering why its definition is so important from the company’s perspective. You can finally assume that traders know the recipient of your products perfectly and have all the available knowledge about this species. You don’t have to be wrong, however… as a rule, people like to take shortcuts.

In sales practice, this means that we operate quite schematically and often make assumptions. After gaining some experience, we fall into a routine and without proper polish, we resort to pigeonholing, judging by previous experience and closing to feedback. And the texts “it does not work with us”, “it is impossible with this client” or “our product is just too expensive”?

Regardless of the market in which you operate, you probably know these slogans of the sales team by heart. However, it does not have to be that way. Just start asking questions. In-depth and allowing the client to obtain information on why they became interested in your offer and why they ultimately (did not) use it. Especially since I have a certain information gap at the very beginning …

According to Paraphrase Online research, a salesperson gets to know the customer when he is already at an advanced stage of the purchasing process. We can talk about a decision made in 57%! Nay. According to Paraphrase Online, the customer can independently complete the shopping path up to 90%!

Before he comes to you with an inquiry, he will first ask for “Uncle Google” instructions. He will collect initial information himself and based on it he will form opinions. What will the network learn about you and your company? It is worth having control over it. But that’s a topic for another article.

How does the Buyer Persona fit into this? It is helpful in supplementing the knowledge about nearly half of our client’s decision-making process. By analyzing the information collected during the interview or in the survey, we will find out how “your story” began, what barriers the client encountered on his path, how he assessed the offer and what criteria he took into account.

What and how to ask in order to collect valuable material?

First of all, bet on relational honesty. Ask directly and don’t be afraid to “go deeper into the topic”. What do you need to know?

– What are your client’s priorities. So what he will definitely not give up, and where there is an area for possible negotiations.
– What is the biggest problem on the way to achieving business goals? Thanks to this, you will be able to refine your offer to make it the best recipe for corporate problems.
– How they have already tried to deal with the problematic issue. And where they were looking for help then.
– Why they decided to test a given solution.

The role of a trader is to enter the recipient’s world. The signposts on this path will be questions that will help to make key decisions. You don’t have to conduct an extensive interview with each client. Experts cited by the Buypersona.pl portal suggest that even 8 half-hour talks are enough to collect substantively valuable material.

How else can you collect data, if not by means of an interview and a survey? There are many tools. Below are some of them:

– Social media – it’s a real bottomless bag when it comes to basic information about the recipients of your content and the users of the services you offer. By analyzing your profiles on SM, you will easily find out what the demographic profile of your client is (his gender, origin, interests). In addition, you will “get” news about what he is interested in and when he is active. Thanks to this, you will plan your post publication hours well. Follow the comments below and learn from your ratings!
– Google Analytics – this tool will work well for practically every analysis. This is valuable information about the sources of website traffic and customer behavior. You will also find out if they browse your website mainly on computers or on mobile devices. This can make a big difference to the type of ad campaigns you’ll invest more money in.
– Google My Business card – the opinions that go there may turn out to be a real mine of knowledge and signposts on the way to improving your business.
– Information from sellers or customer service offices – Your sales representatives and customer service employees are the first front line on the company-customer line. They know your recipient’s profile really well. Sometimes even too good! When collecting information from them, however, remember that people like to take shortcuts, they often generalize and generalize. When creating a Buyer Person, you must rely primarily on data, which you can possibly enrich with a comment from a trader and an ideal customer profile.
– Ethnographic research – is an in-depth analysis and description of the group’s behavior in its natural environment. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do them personally (as a company) – you can just outsource them.
– Focus groups – small but representing the target market. They are representatives of the environment to which you want to direct or direct your offer.

Opinions and information collected in this way are a solid foundation for proper communication and clarification of the offer. This, in turn, may translate into facilitating the work of salespeople and significantly affect the growth of sales bars. And the customer will be satisfied. Everyone wins.

Buyer Persona: Importance for content, PR and… trader!

As we have established, building a purchasing persona is very important for the optimal use of your sales potential. This is the foundation for creating communication, more advanced PR, promotional and marketing activities, and ending with clarifying the offer.

The aforementioned personalizing the message and improving the product or service at the dictation of customers is not everything. It is also good to raise the issue of the sales funnel. Careful and thoughtful segmentation of its individual stages allows taking actions aimed at increasing the chances of a positive transaction closing. Not only that – thanks to funnels, we can forecast income and set the budget on this basis.

Having knowledge of the barriers to contact with the brand faced by a potential customer and what stops their purchasing impulses, we can act accordingly. By using the human element – in short … a trader or the magic of machine operation (for example, automatic sending of e-mails with an offer or reminder about discounts).

Buyer Persona also improves the flow of information between departments. Why? Because we create it based on cool calculation and in-depth data analysis. Dressing them in the form of a fictional client makes it easier to transfer numbers to the real world, better understand the needs and “getting into the shoes” of our recipient. On this basis, we create guidelines for individual departments and narrow the scope of their activities to specific stages of the funnel. So we simply standardize the client’s vision and define the form of communication with him.

What else do we gain?
– Reduction of advertising spending – we know what message will interest our recipient and what channels we have to use to reach them. We can let go of the rest and use the saved funds for the next campaign.
– Image consistency – by introducing a new product, we can quickly verify whether the form of its presentation (in terms of graphics and words) meets the expectations of the recipients.
– Hints about new products – we get the knowledge what our customers need, what we should enrich our offer, and what we simply give up in the world.

Buyers Persona – how to create? Good advice always included!

A. First the content, then the form – the graphic design is important, but the DATA is a solid foundation and foundation. Their proper sourcing and analysis will allow you to understand your client. His needs, purchasing barriers and motivators that influence the purchasing decision.
B. The Buyer Persona grows with the business – the customer model is not created once and for all. Remember that the company is evolving, therefore its recipient naturally also changes. From time to time, make an “x-ray” and check whether the proposed product or service still meets his expectations. Thanks to this, you will never miss the moment of transformation of your client, and, consequently, overshooting the form of the message. It could cost you a lot – literally.
C. Let go of your gut feelings – your visions may be different than what you actually are. Generalizations and stereotyping distort the facts. Pause galloping fantasy horses – rely on reliable data.

Buyer Persona Institute – methodology of influencing the decisions of B2B customers

Adele Revell made the creation of persona a subject of her professional activity. Their fruit is the Buyer Persona Institute (www.buyerpersona.com), which covers the entire methodology of proper persona building, adjusting the product and marketing techniques to the real needs of the recipients of our content.

Ravella suggests that only qualitative interviews with clients (current and potential), careful questioning and, above all, the ability to LISTEN, allow for drawing far-reaching conclusions that translate into a precise sales process. Techniques for conducting a conversation and obtaining information as well as real listening to customer needs are also described in her book “Buyer Personas: How to Gain Insight into your Customer’s Expectations, Align your Marketing Strategies, and Win More Business”. Thanks to this reading, we will learn, among other things:
– How to collect and analyze data.
– Build 3D profiles of real customers.
– How to classify needs.
– How to save (time and money) when creating a Buyer Personas.

The Buyer Personas concept presented by the author of the book is based on 5 pillars of the purchasing experience. They are:
A. An impulse to act – that is, an attempt to find an answer to the question of what happened that made the client consider purchasing a given product or service.
B. Expected results – what are the effects of the investment? What did the client want to get by choosing your offer? This knowledge allows you to build a message on the basis of individual benefits for the client. It then becomes a ready-made recipe for his specific pain. If you don’t do your homework at this stage, you’ll always only talk about the overall benefits, and that has far less driving power!
C. Decision barriers – based on the customer’s attitudes (for example, his trust in opinions about your product that he found online) or factors inside the organization (for example, the supervisor’s lack of consent to continue negotiations).
D. Decision criteria – important when building communication. Knowing them, you will point out the advantages of the product in your content, the most important from the customer’s perspective.
E. Purchase path – steps taken by the recipient during the entire journey after the offer. From getting to know it, to the purchase decision (positive or negative), including the situational context. At this stage you will find out who and to what extent is involved in making the final disposition.

Buyer Persona – template from HubSpot

HubSpot can also prove to be another useful tool in the process of getting into the shoes of customers. Software dedicated to inbound marketing, sales and customer service, which has been taking the market by storm since 2006, offers the Make My Persona option. Buyer Persona Templates by HubSpot are free templates to build your marketing, sales, and customer service teams with a customer profile. The generator allows you to create professional and free buyer personas.

Using the Buyer Persona templates, HubSpot supports the creation of an ideal customer profile. This makes it easier for the team to personalize the collected data and save it in memory. It’s also valuable for organizing your flowchart.

Not all of them have to be your customers. You don’t even want everyone to be! To grow your business, you need to define your ideal target group and direct your personal message to it. Thanks to this, you will create more precise content that your recipient is looking for. In addition, you will facilitate the work of marketers and traders!

Buyer Personas – SUMMARY

We hope that the Buyer Personas issue has been described comprehensively by us. Due to the fact that the publication and the topic itself are quite extensive, at the end we will allow ourselves to rank the most important information.

The Buyer Persona is a fictional character embodying the characteristics of your ideal recipient. However, it should not be confused with the profile of the ideal client, which in this case is supplemented with data provided by an in-depth direct interview. Thanks to it, we gain additional knowledge about the expectations, problems, selection criteria, benefits, but also the entire purchasing path of our client. The one who decides to put the product into the virtual basket or gives it up at the very end. Feedback, which was a purchasing barrier, will allow us to refine the entire process and avoid failure in the future.

Remember! Nobody will tell you more about the pros and cons of your offer than the customer! For that to be the case, you must discard your beliefs and private opinions. Collect reliable data, ask questions, LISTEN (which is not always obvious) and properly interpret the collected material. Then everything will go smoothly.

The information you have will make your marketing and sales more effective. Communication will be personalized and dedicated to a specific group of recipients. You will provide them with valuable content that they are looking for and need. All kinds of blog entries, expert articles in the trade press, e-books or other videos. Still hot and served on a tray.

Not only that – you will be able to save a lot of money by investing them only in those channels that really ensure you reach your customers. Only create a publication schedule, strategy and… you can act. With panache and due daring. Good luck!

The importance of the emotional environment is openly emphasized by the representatives of show business (“we do not sell skills, we sell PPV and emotions”), but probably every modern entrepreneur is aware of the importance of non-financial aspects of sales. The customer should not only buy something, but also feel good about it.

Even the process of purchasing screws, pens or a phone case can be a carefully directed spectacle, after which the customer will leave satisfied and will probably come back to your store next time. It is not about unfairly manipulating the client and persuading him to make a decision that is unfavorable for himself, but about creating a long-term relationship based on trust and mutual respect.

The e-commerce industry, due to its specificity, generates huge amounts of data. We can – in simple terms – track every user movement on our website, in social media, and thanks to cookies and advanced profiling, virtually the entire network.

For this reason, e-commerce relies more and more on analytics every day. While intuition is still a very important element in business, it cannot compete with terabytes of detailed data on user behavior and profiles. Thanks to the huge analytical capabilities, you can get to know the customer’s expectations and see how he meets the brand, how he browses the website and makes a purchase, and whether he is satisfied with the entire experience. So you can design every element of this relationship and adjust it to the user’s expectations.

Customer path – what will be needed?

In order to be able to analyze the behavior of your website user and professionally check whether the customer’s shopping path within the website requires verification, the Google Analytics module will be the key. This powerful system provides thorough data about your website and its users.

The functionality of Google Analytics that you should pay special attention to in the context of the customer journey is Behavior Flow. This component may, inter alia, group content and individual pages and associate it with user behavior, generating detailed reports. You can also find reports that identify Multi-Channel Funnels and Top Conversion Funnels.

The HotJar tool can also help. By tracking the movements of the user’s cursor, it allows to detect those elements of the website navigation that fulfill their role well and those that should be improved.

Customer path and customer experience

The client’s path can be conventionally divided into layers. Each layer is characterized by a different level of customer relationship, which requires slightly different solutions and tools – from the multitude of available methods we have selected a few that have proven their effectiveness – of course, it is not a whole, but it is a very solid basis.

Building awareness

The first moment when the customer’s shopping path is revealed. The interested party is considering purchasing a new service or item. Often, he does not have specific needs yet – he is looking for gifts for Christmas or Black Friday promotions and enters a general phrase related to it in the search engine. Magic begins here, or rather advanced marketing tools that will allow you to make friends with the client and reap mutual benefits.

The first step for a brand should be to say “I am.” At this stage, several solutions may be crucial:
– Text ad in the Google search network – the world’s most popular ad format for many years. The system displays sponsored links matching the phrase entered by the user in the search results.
– SEO – thanks to appropriate positioning, your website will be higher in the search results of a specific phrase, and thus will generate more visits and – probably – transactions.
– Advertising in social media – social media has become one of the foundations of internet marketing. On Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, users provide systems – and therefore marketers – with hundreds of information about their interests, behaviors and views. Thanks to this, it is possible to signal the presence of your brand among people who may be potentially interested in it.
– Google Display Network – a system that allows you to display ads directly on specific pages. GDN covers over 90% of the Internet, including huge portals. In order to use GDN, the advertiser must use data about the user’s interests and on this basis target the user with advertisements.
– YouTube Ads, e.g. bumper – short advertising formats displayed on the YouTube platform. In building brand recognition, the so-called bumpers, lasting a maximum of 6 seconds.
– Blog – at the stage of creating brand awareness, it is a useful tool. A blog entry, e.g. with propositions of gifts for a given occasion, may signal the customer a need for a purchase that he or she is not yet aware of.

If the actions were effective, your brand managed to gain the attention of a potential customer. This means that the tools you used did their job. You have attracted someone’s attention – not just anyone, but the person who by clicking expressed interest in your products.

This is a good start, but not only does it not guarantee success and may even mean little. Time for the second layer of the path.

Consideration

The customer already knows about your existence. Now it’s time to convince him that your offer will be the best choice for him. Let’s face it – probably your brand isn’t the only one it is considering.

At this stage, two aspects will be key – appropriate content and UX (user experience).

– Well-matched content on the category or product page – an attractive and substantive description, photos, promotional materials, video presentation, etc. will make the client consider your offer.
– UX will make sure that the layout of the content and the navigation on the website are friendly enough so that the “pros and cons” analysis is favorable, and the process of adding a product to the basket and then finalizing the order is convenient and fast.

You may also find useful in this step:
– Ads in the Google search network – customer expectations are beginning to crystallize. At this stage, the phrases typed in the search engine become less general, for example, instead of “Christmas gifts”, keywords such as “drone with a camera” or “tricycle” appear. Thanks to Google Search Ads, your offer may appear on the first page of search results even if your page is not well positioned.
– PLA product ads (Product Listing Ads) – a solution that requires Google Merchant Center, which enables direct advertising of a specific product with its photo, description and price Ads are displayed both on a dedicated Google subpage and in search results.
– Customer opinions on Google, on forums and in social media – finding information about a given company, product quality and its approach to customers on the Web will take several seconds. Make sure not only that the product complies with the description, but also what your attitude is and how you deal with controversial situations – the image crisis may delay the development of your brand for years.
– Landing page – the page that the user gets directly after clicking on the link. It can be a category or product page in the store or any other subpage, but often the name of the landing page functions in the collective consciousness as a subpage created specifically for the promotion and sale of a specific item or service.
– Blog – a substantive blog will help create your brand’s image of an expert in a given industry, and at the same time it is a great source of organic traffic and sales support. Entries about a given product category give space to present the assortment with an emphasis on its advantages.
– Price comparison websites – these convenient aggregators of stores and products allow the user to quickly reach similar offers and compare them with each other. Price comparison websites are used by millions of potential customers – make sure you are present on such websites and properly present your product range.
– FAQ (list of frequently asked questions) – after a while you are able to identify certain issues in the relationship with customers that appear repeatedly. So you can prepare a list of the most frequently discussed topics and collect them in one place – thanks to this you will immediately “put your coffee on the bench” and save time – both for yourself and your potential customer.

Purchase (Acquisition)

Time to get the conversion done.

– Dynamic remarketing – is useful in virtually every step of the sales path, but it plays the most important role at this stage. Thanks to remarketing implemented not only in Google Ads, but also in social media (e.g. on Instagram and Facebook), you will remind about your existence and offer. You can also “ask” customers who registered on the website and even added a product to their cart, but for various reasons did not complete the transaction, to complete their purchase.
– YouTube Ads with particular emphasis on YouTube for Action – a special video ad format adapted to increasing conversion. It consists of a CTA, a header and – after playing – a special panel encouraging to click a link.
– Web push – notifications from websites displayed by browsers. Thanks to them, you can remind a potential customer about your offer, who is currently browsing other websites.

In addition to advertising tools, it is worth paying attention to other facilities at this step that are of great importance when converting – for example, the quick payment module, which allows you to complete the transaction almost immediately.

After-sales care (Service)

In order for the brand relationship with the customer to be durable, it cannot end up simply “pushing out” the product. For this reason, you should take care of comprehensive after-sales care after the transaction.

– Technical assistance – few entrepreneurs assume that the product may be defective or simply require some less obvious action on the part of the client, but in a certain percentage of cases such situations will arise anyway. A competent technical support department will provide the customer with assistance, support the building of an expert image of your brand and, above all, give the customer the impression of mutual feelings.
– Friendly warranty process – if the product obviously does not meet the customer’s expectations due to its defects, you must take responsibility for this inconvenience and take care of the repair or replacement of the product with a full-fledged one. If the customer sees that in the event of justified difficulties they can count on your brand, they are more likely to come back for more products.
– Additional materials, such as a FAQ containing technical issues of the product described in a friendly form – thanks to them the customer can find an answer to the issue bothering him without involving the technical support department.

Loyalty

You have successfully sold the product and met the customer’s expectations. You have built a relationship – now you have to maintain it and make the customer return to your store when the need arises again.

What will be useful at this stage?

– Dynamic remarketing – you already know your clients’ profiles and can offer them another offer. The remarketing potential is huge – thanks to this tool, customers can find your brand again, e.g. when scrolling Instagram or – thanks to the Google advertising network – even while browsing messages on various websites. If the customer is already on your remarketing list, you can send messages to them at any time – for example, when you offer new promotions on Black Friday and the customer has previously purchased products from a given category.
– Newsletter – e-mail marketing is considered an anachronism by many people, but it is still an effective and cheap tool for marketers. Thanks to the newsletter, you can send the client information about new promotions, changes in the offer or simply remind that your brand still exists.
– The loyalty program allows you to “retain” the customer for longer, because – in the most popular form of such a program – the more he spends in your store, the greater the benefits will be. These can be discounts on products or material prizes.
– Social media – thanks to social media, you can keep in touch with the customer by providing him with information about products, promotions and the brand as such. Although organic reach in leading portals is unlikely to return to the state from a few years ago, social media, even with a small advertising budget, will allow you to reach current and potential customers.

Why is it worth mapping the customer’s shopping path?

Focusing on a holistic analysis of user behavior on the website has nothing but benefits – it allows both you and advertising systems to better understand the motivations and actions of customers. The main advantage of dividing the customer’s shopping path into the stages presented above is the ability to adapt the entire advertising message (content, format, channel, graphics) to a given stage, which significantly increases the chance of conversion. The customer’s shopping path is therefore an element of optimization of your activities in all areas – paid advertising, promotion, UX or even SEO.

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is a strategy aimed at persuading the customer to contact the company on their own. It was created in opposition to traditional methods of promotion – included in the circle of outbound marketing.

Inbound marketing involves:
– building long-term, valuable relationships with the client – those that will result in not one conversion, but many,
– partner, two-way communication – one in which the company really listens to feedback and reacts to it,
– shaping and strengthening the company’s image and building an emotional bond with customers,
– “leading” the client through the sales process in an advisory form – so as to provide him with the necessary information, but not directly persuade him to buy.

This strategy has been the most popular promotion method in recent years, used by both large brands and smaller companies. The place where it is easiest to implement inbound marketing strategies is the Internet.

Inbound marketing vs outbound marketing: what’s the difference?

Before I go over the specific tools from the “inbound” palette, it is worth explaining in detail the differences between traditional promotional communication methods and inbound marketing.

Messages in outbound marketing:
– have a highly persuasive character,
– they are typical advertisements – they can be easily identified among other content (thus they can be “filtered” by recipients, and thus – ignored),
– they are often overly intrusive, which can evoke negative emotions (although this does not have to be the case, as long as the outbound communication strategy is well planned),
– they are less likely to be precisely targeted, which means that they also reach random recipients, which translates into relatively low efficiency.

It is also worth knowing that outbound advertising can carry high costs per pageview / click, because it has to pass through a fairly dense screen before it reaches the customer who is really interested in the offer. For these reasons, modern marketing focuses precisely on building inbound traffic.

In inbound marketing:
– communication is two-way in nature – it is focused not on one-sided message, but on interaction (thus building partner relations and commitment),
– the goal is to build a relationship, not a one-time sale,
– focuses on counseling, not intrusive persuasion,
– messages are personalized and reach well-targeted recipients – thanks to this, they enjoy a better response.

So you could say that inbound marketing puts the customer in the spotlight and realistically adapts to their needs, not just promising to do it.

What does inbound marketing do?

Reaching for inbound marketing tools is not just a temporary fashion. These activities bring very tangible results – in the long term. By using these tools and, in fact, by changing your approach to the client, you can gain a lot.

– Own database of potential, very promising customers
Not the random ones, of which one or two people out of every 100 people will be interested in your offer. One in which there will be consumers with high conversion potential, and therefore in human terms: more willing to make a purchase. Importantly, the list of potential customers builds itself – those interested will leave the data for you, e.g. by subscribing to the newsletter. This is the beginning of a long road that will ultimately lead to a positive transaction closing in many cases.

– Building commitment
How do you make purchasing decisions? Is it only based on “hard data”? What if you have two products with very similar features and price in front of you? How do you choose then? Then even the most hardened “logicians” will reach for emotions, so they will choose a brand that they simply associate better. One that is not indifferent to them. Being focused on interacting with users and encouraging them to take action on their own is like a foot in the door – the commitment invested builds a bond, and thus increases the chances of the final purchase of the product.

– Financial benefits
Inbound marketing strategies bring long-term benefits – also financial. The costs of generating a lead and then converting are much lower than when using outbound techniques. Reason? Much more precisely targeted communication. Since you reach people who, at least initially, are interested in your offer, the chances that they will decide to buy becomes much higher. Simple! In addition, once set in motion, skilfully selected inbound strategies can function almost like a perpetual motion machine, or at least operate and attract new customers for several years.

– Better meeting customer needs
When you reach for inbound marketing, you focus on how to realistically solve your clients’ problems. And since you give them ready-made proposals tailored to what they really want (and not what you think they want!), You can count on positive interest.

In summary, inbound marketing means lower costs, higher effectiveness in reaching customers and long-term effects. In a word: everything you dreamed of!

How to start using inbound marketing?

You already know what exactly inbound marketing is. However, this is just the beginning of the road. Now you have to plan your strategy in this spirit. What tools to use? How to prepare for it?

First things first: in inbound strategies you give the client a sense of control. You give him your responsibility. You just let it find you. You don’t urge. You show possibilities. Only this and so much.

How to implement inbound marketing strategies?

Inbound is based on three main tasks that the marketer has to face – obviously related to the stages of leading the customer through the sales funnel. You use inbound marketing to:
– attract the recipient’s attention – inform them in advance about your presence on the market and show that you are a partner who can be trusted. At this stage, it’s all about building a brand image,
– engage him in interaction – it does not have to be a purchase of the product right away At the beginning, it is enough for him to like your post, write a comment or subscribe to the newsletter. The time for the “harvest” will come later,
– provide a solution to your problems, so you can enjoy your purchase.

Remember: the above levels of commitment also define the relationship with the customer, who from a complete stranger becomes a “friend” (feeling a hint of sympathy for the brand), a friend, customer, and finally a promoter of your company. And this is exactly what it is about to achieve.

What inbound tools can be used on the Internet?

The range of tools suitable for generating incoming traffic is huge – especially in the Internet space. At each of the stages discussed above, you can apply different solutions and media.

Inbound techniques at the stage of attracting the recipient’s attention

Attracting a customer’s attention – especially in a competitive market – can be the biggest challenge. So how do you get attention by doing it in a non-pushy way? The answer is simple: prepare valuable content for the recipient. For that to be the case, you must define in advance who and for what purpose you will be addressing.

In inbound marketing it will not be necessary to clearly define the purpose of the promotion and the meticulous creation of personas. It’s about identifying exactly who your potential customers are. You have to answer questions about their needs, concerns, worries and … how their day is going. How do they use the Internet? Where can you find them?

Once you know this, getting their attention becomes much easier. You will not be blind, and you will appear where they are also. And what specific tools to use?

Content marketing
Create a company blog and publish valuable content on it – the kind that will allow you to find answers to the questions bothering your customers. They cannot be strictly advertising. The more expert and specific the responses you give your audience, the better your impression will be.

Social media marketing
Start promoting yourself on social media. Not all of them, but those that your customers visit. For example, a clothing manufacturer can “win” little by promoting itself on LinkedIn or Twitter, but already on Facebook or Instagram – much more! Remember that promotion through these channels is about building engagement – and therefore about making your posts receive the greatest possible response from “live” users.

SEO
Positioning is the first step to attracting attention to your offer. The higher your page is in the search results for related phrases, the greater the chance that the interested party will find your page and leave a lead.

Classic ads
preferably in the remarketing model – so that they reach people potentially and initially interested in the solutions offered. Thanks to this, you will gain a greater impact on real results.

How to engage customers?

The second step is building commitment. You can also use the tools above, but the ones below are most suitable for bonding and interacting.

Landing page
So “landing page” – a special, short and specific website, the purpose of which is to obtain a lead, i.e. customer contact details. It must be very interactive and offer the recipient an advantage for leaving an email – it could be, for example, a free e-book.

Newsletter
Sent to people who have left their own leads, it is much more effective than communication with recipients from an external, random base. E-mails will remind recipients of your existence and encourage them to click, read an interesting article, and take advantage of the current promotions that you offer.

Chat-bots
Those that appear directly on your website and, for example, on your Facebook fanpage. Their task is to encourage the client to start a conversation – in a simple and easily accessible form. They can automatically answer frequently asked questions or… redirect you to the seller.

Marketing automation tools
This includes intelligent solutions that contact the customer when he has already taken some action. For example: a customer visited the website looking for vacation offers, but at the last moment changed their mind. The system can send the person a question about why this happened or send a message with similar offers.

How to build a positive relationship and satisfaction with cooperation?

Cooperation with the customer in the inbound model does not end with the purchase. This is just the beginning of the road. Therefore, communication with him also continues after the transaction is completed. At this stage, you can use, among others:
– mailing – sending an e-mail with thanks, a discount code for subsequent purchases or a request to evaluate the course of cooperation evokes positive impressions,
– marketing automation – periodic communication with the customer and sending him new offers.

Of course, there are many more tools that can be used for inbound-style communication, and a specific strategy should be developed taking into account the specifics of the company’s operations.