Career Advice

What Does an Inbound Marketer Do?

Are you considering becoming an inbound marketer? Read here to learn more about the job, who is a good fit, and how to become one.

By DMJ Team

Inbound marketers are some of the most sought-after marketing and branding professionals. Business owners know they need to build solid relationships with customers for success thus the need for inbound marketers grows.

Inbound marketers are valuable because they must have different marketing skills. This further increases their demand in the marketing world. There’s no doubt you can build a successful career if you become an inbound marketer.

If you’re interested in becoming an inbound marketer keep reading. Learn more about what an inbound marketer does and how you can get started.

What Is an Inbound Marketer?

An inbound marketer is a persuasion expert using organic marketing strategies to boost traffic and leads. Their primary role is to create tailored content to boost demand for products and sales.

Inbound marketing involves using tactics that help to build meaningful connections with customers. Unlike outbound marketing, it’s non-interruptive. It’s focused on empowering prospects to solve their problems at any stage in the sales funnel.

As an inbound marketer, you need some mastery of several pull marketing strategies. These strategies include public speaking, content marketing, video marketing, search engine optimization, and social media marketing.

An Inbound Marketer’s Job Description

As an inbound marketer, you can work as a freelancer, full-time employee or become your own boss. But no matter how you work, your general role is to develop and manage inbound campaigns for clients.

Inbound marketers need an in-depth understanding of the brand they’re marketing. They need to conduct market research to understand their clients’ competitors and industry. An inbound marketer’s day may not end without ideation and brainstorming sessions.

Inbound marketers have to produce creative ideas to give their clients a competitive edge. At the core, inbound marketers are content creators. They’re constantly producing new marketing materials like SEO copy, blogs, newsletters, whitepapers, eBooks, newsletters, and social media copy.

Clients and brands expect concrete results from any outbound campaign. So, inbound marketers must measure their performance against pre-agreed key performance indicators to show their impact. They’ll need mastery of analytics to do this.

Inbound marketers also need to stay updated with marketing trends to deliver relevant campaigns. They have to be serial learners to have industry best practices and strategies at their fingertips.

What Skills You Need to Become an Inbound Marketer

74% of organizations worldwide rely on inbound marketing strategies. Inbound marketing is cost-effective, ROI impactive, and high in demand around the world.

With the right skills, you can build a successful inbound marketing career. Here’s what you need to master to get started in the industry.

Understand Search Engine Optimization

SEO is the process of increasing a website’s search engine ranking through organic marketing strategies. A great inbound marketer should also have good SEO skills. Having SEO skills means you can audit a client’s website to establish the cause of its rankings.

You also need to research keywords and optimize pages using relevant tags, descriptions, and tailored content. SEO is a crucial skill for modern businesses. Every business wants to show on top of search engine results for its keywords.

Learn Copywriting

An inbound marketer needs to master the usage of words to convince buying action. Inbound marketers create website content to attract, engage and delight customers. Their role is to use content to convert strangers into brand promoters.

With inbound marketing, SEO and copywriting go together. Building an authority website takes powerful SEO copy. As a marketer, you have to ensure users can quickly find your pages and enjoy the reading experience.

Follow the top copywriting blogs to understand how to create persuasive articles. Also, take copywriting courses and read the best copywriting books. Above all, remember copywriting is about practice. You have to grow a writing habit and train how to tailor content for specific audiences.

Have an Analytical Mind

An inbound marketer is an analyst. They track users’ problems to develop practical solutions. They have to think, explore data, and read reports to create practical solutions for their users.

It’s thus crucial to have an analytical mind and master google analytics to understand the best tactics for your inbound strategy. Take the free Google Analytics certification and also learn how web analytics work.

Become a Storyteller

Storytelling is an indispensable part of inbound marketing. Storytelling conveys purpose and is a quick way of boosting brand awareness. If you’re a great storyteller, you could quickly become an in-demand inbound marketer.

Successful marketing gets to the hearts of users. As a marketer, you need to evoke an emotional connection with your audience by sharing relatable experiences. Stories matter to your audience, and they can capture and pull them to your brand.

Be Agile and Adaptable

Digital marketing evolves at a fast pace. If it’s not Instagram launching a new feature, it’s Google updating its algorithms. If you’re not agile and audible, you risk lagging in your career and failing your clients.

Become a serial reader of the top outbound digital marketing blogs and newsletters. Learn from HubSpot, NeilPatel, JeffBullas, Moz, Search Engine Journal and, of course, DigitalMarketingJobs. Keep up with inbound marketing trends and you’ll remain a relevant marketer.

Know Some Principles of Neuromarketing

Understanding marketing psychology is one essential part of becoming an inbound marketer. It’s easier to succeed in marketing when you understand your customer. You need to know what drives them to buy your product.

Any strategy that tries to explore how a customer thinks and behaves involves psychology. So, to attract and convert more people, learn some principles of marketing psychology.

What to Expect as an Inbound Marketer

Inbound marketing is a flexible and exciting career path with endless growth opportunities. If you have the skills, you can choose to work from anywhere. You can also start a business and offer your services to local and online businesses.

If you’re looking for job security, inbound marketing is a good bet. Ecommerce is growing. And the demand for marketers is expected to increase by 10% between 2020 and 2030.

An inbound marketing job keeps you on your toes from the very first day. You have to grow and use different skills. This is a challenge that’s likely to propel growth in the marketing industry. As a senior, you could specialize in an area like search engine optimization.

Start Your Journey to Become an Inbound Marketer

Being an inbound marketer is a great career option for people who tend to be creative and analytical. You can use your natural attributes and learn these key skills to get started.

Ready to become an inbound marketer? Go and pursue these skills one by one. You have a chance of finding a junior marketing job once you master at least one skill.

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