What is Inbound Marketing? This guide reveals the special inbound formula you should be using for your brands.

1. What is Inbound Marketing?
Why is it so irresistibly attractive?

2. Inbound versus outbound marketing
Traditional marketing is outbound. You’re:
a. cold-calling,
b. shoulder-rubbing,
c. and print-advertising your product to those you hope will buy.

3. Inbound versus outbound marketing
Think about the last time you purchased a mobile phone. Here’s likely
what happened:
- You didn’t just pop into a store and purchase
- You didn’t click on the first or third ad for mobile phones that you saw

4. Inbound versus outbound marketing
You likely did what most consumers do today:
Consumers today are researching, asking questions and
finding answers online before making their purchase.
Consumers today are informed customers.

5. KPMG reports that 55% of MENA consumer who
purchase online first research the product online –
looking at online reviews and recommendations

6. And that’s what inbound
marketing excels at – it informs.

7. How do you ‘nurture’ your audience towards
becoming customers?
Simple. By following the inbound marketing methodology, or working
the inbound marketing funnel.

8. The Inbound Marketing Funnel

9. The Inbound Marketing Funnel
There are four stages in the inbound marketing funnel:
1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Decision
4. Advocacy

10. 1. Awareness.
Customers need to be aware of your brand, and so you ‘attract’ them
to your site.
As the illustration shows, there are various tools one can use for each
stage of the inbound marketing funnel, and they include: Blog Posts,
Topic Clusters, Social Media Content, Search Engine Optimization (SEO),
E-Books, Templates, Podcasts and Video Content.

11. 2. Consideration
Customers ought to consider your brand, from amongst your
competitors, before they buy. At this stage, you work on ‘converting’
them to prefer your brand over the competition.
The various tool that can be used during this stage are: Forms to
download content, Calls-to-Action (CTAs), Landing Pages, White Papers
and Emails.

12. 3. Decision
Customers take the decision to purchase your product. This is where
you ‘Close’ the deal.
The various tools one can use for this stage are Customer Relationship
Management (CRM), Email Marketing and Workflows.

13. 4. Advocacy
Customers who develop an affinity for your brand are those most likely
to promote it to their friends and family. By ‘delighting’ customers, they
become brand advocates.
The various tool that can be used during this stage are: Surveys, User
Generated Content (UGC), SMART content and Social Monitoring.

14. Examples of Inbound Marketing
versus Outbound Marketing

15. Real Estate

16. Real Estate
In order to attract customers to a new luxury development project, a series of blog
posts, optimized for SEO, about what the ideal customer/s is looking for when
looking to purchase real estate would be recommended.
Accordingly:
a. Create blog posts on the return on investment an investor could expect,
b. Followed by video posts on the luxury amenities in the vicinity of the property,
and
c. Publish a series of social media posts of famous celebrities that have already
booked a space.

17. Hospitality and Food (F&B)

18. Hospitality and Food (F&B)
Imagine a vegan-friendly eatery, catering to the health-conscious.
The following inbound content will raise awareness for the restaurant,
and would have people actively consuming the content online:
a. Short 1-minute videos from the resident chef on how to prepare a
healthy breakfast with minimum effort
b. Photo series showing discussions about in-season veggies and crops
with local farmers
c. Food recommendations – soups, stews, goulash – at the onset of
winter (to promote eating heart-warming, comfort food, in season)

19. Hospitality and Food (F&B)
In order to nurture those leads to convert, close and delight them, use
emails, workflows and user generated content.
Additionally,
a. Share snippets of how healthy ingredients are sourced,
b. Offer promotional lunch deals for social media followers, and
c. Repurpose customer testimonies of what made the dishes so out of
this world.

20. A Case Study – Inbound Marketing Example
in the UAE and Middle East North Africa
(MENA)

21. Case Study
CRYO, founded in Dubai in 2013, specialises in cryotherapy, a curative
and futuristic health treatment that uses extremely low temperatures
to drive four main benefits:
• Recovery
• Beauty
• Wellness
• Weight loss

22. Case Study
Before jumping on the inbound bandwagon, they received an average
of 18,000 visitors a month.
After deploying a strategic inbound marketing approach, they get
26,000 visitors, a 44% increase in website visits.
As Barish Elrekabi, vice president of marketing enthusiastically shares,
“Our lead numbers have risen by 128%, from 350 a month to 800…
[Because of inbound].. we have even been able to cut back on our PPC
advertising.”

23. Important Caveat: Inbound Marketing
doesn’t work alone
Core parts of a marketing engine apart from inbound marketing:
• Paid promotions
• Physical networking
• Participation in marketing events, award ceremonies, trade shows
and workshops.

24. I'm in. How do I upskill?
Hubspot offers excellent free, online courses in inbound.
You can:
• watch the short videos if you are short on time;
• or invest a few hours and get certified with Hubspot’s Inbound
Certification.

25. In closing, follow this simple three-step formula:
1. Advise, help and inform
2. Nurture
3. Synchronize with offline marketing techniques for a holistic
marketing strategy

26. To read the article in full, visit:
https://www.eleven777.com/blog/marke-think/what-
is-inbound-marketing-heres-what-our-middle-east-
case-study-shows