The inbound approach
- Attract: blog posts, guides, videos and tools that answer your audience’s questions, found through SEO and social media.
- Engage: turn visitors into leads with useful offers, such as templates, checklists or a free audit, and follow up with helpful emails.
- Delight: give customers a great experience, so they buy again and recommend you.
The term was popularized by HubSpot in the late 2000s.
Inbound vs outbound marketing
Outbound marketing pushes messages to people who didn’t ask for them: cold calls, cold emails, and TV and print ads. Inbound draws in people who are already searching. It usually costs less per lead and builds lasting assets, but it takes longer to start working, so many businesses combine the two.
What inbound needs to work
- A clear picture of your buyer personas and their questions
- Consistent, genuinely useful content, with SEO behind it
- Offers and forms that turn visitors into leads
- Email nurturing, and a CRM to follow up
- Measurement of which content brings leads and customers
Inbound marketing example
A company that sells project management software publishes a free template for planning a website migration. People searching for “website migration checklist” find it, download it with their email address and receive three short emails with tips. One in a hundred asks for a demo. The company never called them first, and they already trust its advice when they speak to sales.
Inbound marketing checklist
- Define who you want to attract and the questions they ask.
- Create content that answers those questions better than the pages that rank now.
- Add a clear, optional offer on each page, such as a template or checklist.
- Follow up with useful emails that guide people to a decision.
- Ask customers for reviews and referrals.
- Measure traffic, leads, sales and the sources that bring them.
Inbound marketing mistakes
- Expecting quick results. It builds over months.
- Gating everything behind forms.
- Producing content with no plan to follow up with visitors.
- Dropping outbound completely when some of your customers still need to be contacted.
Inbound marketing FAQs
How does it differ from content marketing?
Inbound marketing includes content marketing plus lead capture, nurturing and customer care. See content marketing and lead nurturing.
Is SEO part of inbound marketing?
Yes, it is one of the main ways people find you. See SEO and demand generation.