Inbound marketing

 Inbound marketing 

What is inbound marketing? 

Inbound marketing is a modern way of connecting with consumers. It is about gaining trust mainly through websites, social media or blog posts. It is great to create blog posts and speak about products which you want to promote, it builds trust and consumers are more likely to buy it. It is a more personal approach to marketing, instead of using ads, which would be considered outbound marketing, inbound marketing focuses on connecting with people who are already looking for specific products or services. 

Approach to inbound marketing

I have chosen to compare clothing brand Asos (https://www.asos.com) and bodybuilding supplement brand MyProtein (https://www.myprotein.com). 

Asos has pretty straight forward demographics, in 2018 their most regular consumers were females between 18 and 34 years. 

Because of this their advertisement is focused on social media like Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat. You can find all of those links on their website on the side bar. 

Their call to actions are present through the website, for example “add to bag” or “add to wishlist”. Call to action (CTA) button encourages the audience to click on the link you desire. That's why these links are usually different colours and pop out from the website. In inbound marketing it is important to have everything connected, asos is achieving this by adding links on their website but also on their social media, where they've put a lot of focus. 

MyProtein is a company focusing on gym nutrition, accessories, clothing and much more. Their approach to inbound marketing is slightly different. They are focusing on deals. Every week you can find different deals and bundles and you can save up to 75% on chosen products. That way people are drawn to their company, especially because you have a lot of items in one place. This is achieved by already mentioned CTA links, that way you can’t miss any deal they are offering. 

Strength and weaknesses

Asos’s strength would definitely be social media - they are active, posting once or twice a day, and include a lot of videos. Videos are a great way of engaging with audiences since it is more popular nowadays. 

They also have a really nicely done website - it is easy to navigate. You can search by multiple categories, apart from classic ones (like female or male), you can search by time of the year, brand, discount, budget but also by events. Any item you click on you can then go to other items worn by the model in the picture. 

It is also worth mentioning Asos has a fully optimised website, that way you can open their website on any device and it will adjust. They also have an app. That is important in inbound marketing as well, since most of the consumers search from their smartphones. 

With that said their page seems a bit overwhelming. There are a lot of categories and even though it is easy to navigate, there are just too many of them. 

I would say they have really good search engine optimization (SEO), when I was trying keywords on search engines, Asos came up almost every time and just one of five times was an ad. 

MyProtein’s website is not as chaotic as Asos's one, at least for me. First page is designed to show what they are focusing on - gym, health and overall wellbeing. 

They’ve made sure to include their blog where you can find fitness tips, recipes but also christmas gifts. That is a great way of building trust, which is a key in an inbound approach. Each post has a link to the item they are writing about, that way you can go straight to purchasing that product. 

MyProtein does not have an app, but their website is optimised. 

Overall design of their website is nice but there is nothing special about it. It is not really eye-catching, apart from the fact that there are a lot of pop up links for discounted items. 

Improvement

As I already mentioned, Asos’s main focus is on the website and social media. Even though they are doing a good job with their website, as I said before, it seems a bit overwhelming. I would personally sort categories a bit differently. Maybe changing couple of categories for “hot girl summer”, “office outfits” or “gala evening” would help new consumer navigate their website better. 

MyProtein can improve their website design, especially when it comes to photos and images, they would prosper from getting more brand focused pictures on their website. 

After slight keyword research I can see that their optimization is not as good as Asos's. They do come up as ads but not on top of the page; even after searching for “protein” or “gym clothing” they only came in third place as an ad.

From my research they both can improve their websites - either in design or categorisation. SEO is nicely done by Asos, MyProtein could do some improvement, so even people only looking for a healthy lifestyle, without being interested in gym life, could find them.

I would personally say that Asos has really good inbound marketing, especially when it comes to social media. Even though MyProtein doesn’t fall far from Asos, there is more improvement needed in my opinion.

References:

Brophy, A. (2018), ASOS - Marketing week masters ‘Brand of the Year’, in Yougov [online], available at: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/consumer/articles-reports/2018/10/10/asos-marketing-week-masters-brand-year  [accessed on 15th of December 2022]

Marketing schools (2020), Explore the strategy of inbound marketing in Marketing schools [online], available at: https://www.marketing-schools.org/types-of-marketing/inbound-marketing/#section-0 [accessed on 15th of december 2022]

Quadros, M. (2022), 17 Call To Action Examples (+ How to Write the Perfect Social CTA) in Adespresso [online], available at: https://adespresso.com/blog/call-to-action-examples/ [accessed on 15th of December 2022]