Inbound Marketing: What It Is, Why It Works, and How to Start
6 Steps to Get AI to Recommend Your Brand
Inbound marketing can have an immense impact on how you generate leads.
What’s different about inbound marketing?
It focuses on attracting customers to your business rather than pushing messages out to them.
Mobile vet service, BetterVet, demonstrates the power of this approach.
BetterVet doubled down on SEO by publishing A LOT of helpful content to help folks care for their pets.
The effort paid off.
BetterVet’s organic traffic exploded:
Want to learn how inbound marketing can boost your business? You’re in luck. Today, you’ll learn key strategies to add to your marketing mix and see successful case studies for inspiration.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a way to grow by earning attention instead of interrupting people. Instead of pushing messages out with ads or cold outreach, you publish helpful content that your audience is already looking for. Then you meet them where they’re searching and scrolling, with channels like content marketing, SEO, social media, and email.
This isn’t theory, either. Companies like HubSpot and NerdWallet built major growth engines around content and search.
In practice, inbound usually follows a simple flow:
- Attract the right people with useful content
- Convert that attention into leads (subscribers, demo requests, trial signups)
- Nurture those leads until they’re ready to buy
Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing
Should you focus on inbound or outbound marketing? Backlinko is biased toward inbound, but you could benefit from using both methods.
Here are the differences:
| Inbound Marketing | Outbound Marketing | |
|---|---|---|
| Method | Pull: Attract customers organically by creating content they value | Push: Push general messages out to a broad audience |
| Content Examples | Blog posts, articles, social media updates, email newsletters, ebooks, whitepapers, webinars, infographics, videos, podcasts | Digital advertisements, email blasts, TV commercials, billboards, direct mail, cold calls |
| Cost | Generally more cost-effective in the long run due to lower customer acquisition costs | Can be expensive due to the high cost of advertising |
| Ideal For | Attracting fewer, but more highly qualified leads | Reaching a larger, broader audience quickly |
Why Inbound Marketing Is So Effective
What’s so special about inbound marketing? Simple: It works. Here are the top four benefits of inbound marketing:
#1: It Attracts Qualified Leads
Inbound marketing acts like a magnet for high-quality prospects. How? Your audience comes to you with hands raised for something. They could be downloading a resource, signing up for a webinar, booking an appointment, or buying your product. Point is: These are people willing and ready to engage with your business. And it’s effective. Inbound marketing produces 54% more leads than traditional outbound does. And costs 62% less. That means you’re spending less money and effort on your marketing. And you’re less likely to target people who aren’t interested in your products or services.
Just look at Sess Lee Cannon. She brings in over $1 million a year for her local hair salon in Texas. She relies primarily on social media, creating content for people interested in taking better care of curly hair.
#2: It Improves Customer Experience
A good inbound marketing strategy gives customers a great experience. How? You provide content and experiences that deeply resonate with your audience. You address their needs, challenges, and preferences. They have a positive experience as a result. And they’re more likely to stay loyal to your brand.
Look at what PureGym is doing. The company offers free exercise guides to any user. Whether they have an active PureGym membership or not.
#3: It Builds Trust and Credibility
When you provide value to your audience consistently, your brand becomes a trusted resource. Why? People start to see you as an expert they can rely on when they need industry-related insights and solutions. Take Backlinko, for example. We publish roughly 50 articles per month about SEO and online marketing. People trust us. And they come back for more.
#4: It Has Long-Term Impact
Want to publish a piece of content that generates leads for months or even years after it goes live? Inbound marketing can do that. Assets like blog posts, videos, and ebooks can have lasting power. For example, Nourish Move Love published a detox tea recipe back in 2016. Even years later, that single piece of content still draws a consistent flow of visitors to the company’s site:
4 Proven Inbound Marketing Strategies
But how do you do inbound marketing? Here are four of the best strategies:
#1: Content Marketing
A key part of inbound marketing is [content marketing](/content/hub/content/what-is-content-marketing "What Is Content Marketing? Complete Beginner's Guide"/index.html). By providing valuable information that’s directly relevant to your target audience, good content acts as a magnet to attract ideal customers.
#2: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
[SEO](/content/seo-basics-for-beginners "SEO Basics: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners"/index.html) helps make your business more visible on search engine results pages (SERPs). With SEO, you attract potential customers who are actively searching for products or services like yours. At Backlinko, we’ve honed our [SEO strategy](/content/seo-strategy "How to Create an Effective SEO Strategy in 2024"/index.html).
#3: Social Media Marketing
With social media, you can build brand awareness, engage your audience, and attract traffic to your website. But most importantly, your content can lead to sales. For instance, Miss Excel’s online training generates $2 million per year.
#4: Email Marketing
Email campaigns can be inbound or outbound. How to tell the difference? Inbound [email marketing](/content/email-marketing-guide "Email Marketing: The Definitive Guide"/index.html) is defined by user interest.
Real-World Inbound Marketing Success Stories
Let’s take a look at a couple more real-world examples. These are brands that have successfully used inbound marketing to grow their businesses:
1. Casper
Casper, a mattress company, has a great inbound marketing strategy. They create playful content to educate consumers about sleep health. That includes blog posts, social media, and email marketing.
2. Babish
In 2016, Andrew Rea started a YouTube channel sharing pop culture-inspired cooking videos. He was recreating iconic dishes like “Ratatouille.”
3. Pointe Pest Control
In 2019, Pointe Pest Control was paying $104 per lead. Recognizing that the cost per lead was unsustainable, the company decided to make a shift.
Ready to Add Inbound Marketing to Your Strategy?
Inbound marketing can be an efficient, sustainable way to grow your business. And it works for businesses of all sizes, industries of all types, and whether your business is new or long-established.