Inbound marketing methods used by two organisations

In simple terms, inbound marketing is an innovative and new marketing strategy that attracts leads to your company. The purpose of this new marketing technique is to attract, engage and delight new and existing customers in a non-aggressive manner, focusing more on buyer personas. Here we investigate both the websites and inbound marketing strategies of Holland&Barrett and its first competitor, Boots.

Approaches to inbound marketing

Recognised as ‘Best Beauty Retailer’ at the Sunday Times Style Beauty awards and with over 2500 stores in UK, Boots can be easily used as an example for inbound marketing. Their website is stylish and easy to navigate with a wide range of offers, especially for loyal customers. With over 1.2 million Facebook followers and 1million liking Instagram, Boots is actively engaging with its audience and pushing traffic to their stories website.

On the other hand, with over 145 years’ of experience in the industry, H&B’s inbound strategy is more customer oriented; being actively involved in charities and supporting local communities. They have also created an innovative idea called Healthbox, where after completing a free health and lifestyle consultation, the customer is recommended vitamins and supplements by a nutritionist.

Strengths and weaknesses of the inbound marketing approach

And the winner is…

Even though H&B has outstanding social media and engages well with their audience, Boots has better inbound marketing. Boots effectively understands its audience and uses fitted email marketing. Boots builds trust at every point along the buyer journey by providing details about their products in all content formats and offers customised discounts to loyal customers. The website has pleasant graphics and is easy to find the information needed.

How each organisation could improve its inbound marketing

H&B could increase high quality lead numbers with more effective buyer personas and improve email marketing by reducing the quantity and increasing the quality with more accurate email marketing. In contrast, Boots could improve their social media content to attract more engagement from their audience.