Lately we’ve been talking about how the practice of inbound marketing converts fans, followers and visitors into brand ambassadors. We shared how to use “calls-to-action” and “landing pages” to attract and delight customers and consumers. So what exactly do these terms and the philosophy of inbound marketing mean?

Inbound marketing can simply be explained as earning your way to customers. It is the process of gaining your visitors attention by making yourself available, offering valuable content through your website to convert qualified contacts and then nurturing those contacts into regular customers of your products and advocates of your brand.

Provided below are 15 commonly used terms and definitions to help you get more acquainted with the inbound marketing methodology.

15 Inbound Marketing Terms to Know

1. Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is a basic profile of a target customer or consumer. It helps produce marketers visualize the ideal contact, their behavior, demographic profile, and psychographic information.

2. Contact

A contact is a website visitor with the potential to become a buying customer. In the fresh produce world, a contact can range from an industry buyer of your products/services, to a blogging mommy who may one day become an ambassador of your brand and messages.

3. Conversion

This occurs when a stranger or visitor fills out a “form” and provides you with their contact information.  Collecting contact information is a large part of inbound marketing by helping you define buyer personas and develop content that is most valuable to them. To achieve conversion you must provide visitors with something valuable (like an offer) that will encourage them to fill out a form – such as eBooks, whitepapers, tip sheets, etc.

4. Contact Database

This is the centralized hub to store all of the contacts you’re converting while practicing inbound. This hub will help you track all interactions with consumers through digital communication channels including email, social media, landing pages, etc. At
DMA Solutions, we use HubSpot as our contact database management software which houses all of our contacts collected through our marketing efforts.

5. Enthusiast

People who praise brands without being told to do so.Through inbound marketing you will be able to identify, track and nurture these individuals on the behalf of your brand. As they are nurtured, brands are able to convert enthusiasts into brand and product evangelists.

6. Evangelist

People that are the champions and cheerleaders of your brand. Through inbound marketing you can identify these individuals. This includes all of your contacts who are downloading and sharing your content on a regular basis.

7. Content

In reference to inbound, content is the written information that exists to be consumed, engaged with, and shared by individuals. It can typically be found in the form of an “offer” like an eBook, blog post, video, social media post, infographic, slideshow, or one-pager to name a few.

8. Offer

Offers are something of value that a company gives to their audience in exchange for specific information. (Ex. Free downloads in the form of guides, consultations, reports, samples or other exclusive content)

9. Call-to-Action

A link or image, similar to a digital ad, strategically placed throughout your website or blog that drives traffic and calls attentions to an offer. A call-to-action may also be placed within an email sent to your audience. Ex. Download our Ultimate Social Media Toolkit!

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10. Landing Page

A webpage that educates prospective customers or consumers about your offer and provides a form (see No. 6) for visitors to submit information in order to receive that offer.

11. Form

This is a digital survey housed on a landing page that collects information about your visitors in exchange for your offer. Forms are customizable so that the information you gain from contacts will become the info that helps you transform them into enthusiasts and evangelists of your product (see No. 2 and No. 11)

12. Thank You Page

Thank You pages are where new contacts are sent after submitting their information to claim your offer.

13. Nurture

Nurturing allows you to remarket to or prompt existing contacts to take advantage of new offers with the goal of pushing them closer to the evangelist status.

14. Workflow

A workflow is another way to describe a contact nurturing campaign. It’s a set of triggers and events that help move a contact through the qualification process from stranger to evangelist.

15. HubSpot

HubSpot is an inbound marketing software platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert contacts, and nurture customers. At DMA Solutions, we’re evangelists of HubSpot, using it as our inbound marketing management and measurement software. We are individually HubSpot certified as well as being a Hubspot Certified Inbound agency partner.

Inbound marketing will allow you to attract, connect, convert and delight customers and consumers. Ultimately it will transform your marketing and help you to understand the wants and needs of the individuals who are sincerely interested in your products and receiving regular information from your company.

To learn more about inbound marketing, following are three relevant blog posts that will help:

• Are You Ready for Inbound Marketing?
• Will We Keep Our Seats at the Food Marketing Table?
• 5 Posts to Help You Jumpstart Your Inbound Marketing Journey.

Have more to add? Leave us a comment below, or tweet to us at @TheCoreBlog!

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