How Inbound Marketing Can Attract and Retain Your Customers

Do you still have any doubts that inbound marketing is a fundamental strategy for attracting your company's customers? So you are in the right place. Today, you will understand, once and for all, the reasons why investing in inbound is essential for any and every business.

The way of communicating changes all the time, and that old cliché that "the way of communicating has changed" is no longer new, nor is it unconvincing. Everyone already knows that! And anyone who works with communication knows that it's like the memes that circulate on the internet say: the communication and marketing professional doesn't have a moment's peace (laughs). 

Joking aside, whenever the nuances that give light to these changes emerge, it is up to us, as professionals, to identify them and bring them to the reality of our customers, and it is here, once again, that inbound marketing sinks. its roots even further: in two-way communication between brand and customer. 

Inbound is not a strategy that emerged yesterday, and it is not a strategy focused exclusively on sales; in inbound, selling is strategic and part of the process. It is not for nothing that inbound marketing is also known as content marketing, here, content breathes relationship and this relationship helps to optimize budget, reduce the purchase journey and, in addition, it brings you closer to the consumer.

By the way, here's a hook: if you are one of those people who are more resistant to terms and "news", know that inbound is already practiced long before it is inbound! Since marketing 2.0, we can already see the nuances of inbound being used even without the knowledge that it would become part of a larger strategy a few years down the road. 

If you still haven't picked up the thread, remember that marketing 2.0 was the 90's phase, when brands stopped thinking only about the 4P's and started to take into account the characteristics and profile of consumers (4 C's), and it was also at that moment that the internet began to appear in the masses and, then, the idea of ​​online research began, timidly, to be part of the consumer's life. 

Later, in Marketing 3.0, the focus was already on offering consumers better environments related to products, creating a better product, a more complete ecosystem and already thinking about usability and consumer experience in the purchase journey. 

Arriving at marketing 4.0, the concept of inbound was already known, but it was not yet considered as important an arm of marketing as it is today, in any case, at this stage, the internet was already a consistent part of the routine and the purchase journey changed completely. ; we started to customize products, services and solutions, we anticipated the desire and worked with anticipation. 

Until recently, we hadn’t fully reached the concept of Marketing 5.0, presented by Philip Kotler in 2021. In this stage, inbound marketing stops being “nice to have” and becomes a strategic pillar, because it connects advanced technologies — such as AI, automation and analytics — with deeply human customer experiences.

In Marketing 5.0: Technology for Humanity, the main focus is using data and intelligence to deliver real value at every touchpoint, personalizing the journey without losing empathy. Inbound marketing is the engine that sustains this ongoing relationship and turns customers into true brand advocates.

From now on, we will guide you to get to know inbound marketing more deeply and understand how it will help you attract new customers.

Inbound marketing for client acquisition, in practice

Inbound marketing is a set of communication and marketing strategies focused on attracting, engaging, and delighting a specific audience through relevant content and ongoing relationships. Instead of aiming only at immediate sales, it puts the customer at the center, combines funnel and flywheel, and follows the entire buying journey. With the evolution to Marketing 5.0, inbound connects technology, data, AI, and automation with a more human experience, helping reduce acquisition costs, shorten the journey, and turn customers into true brand advocates.

• • Attract, engage, and delight customers in a continuous flywheel cycle.

  • Create niche, relevant content for a clearly defined audience.

  • Align marketing and sales to organize the buying journey.

  • Lower customer acquisition costs and optimize media budgets.

  • Use data transparently and in line with data protection rules when capturing leads.

What you will see in today’s content

• The evolution of marketing up to Marketing 5.0 and why inbound has become so relevant.

• What inbound marketing is and how it differs from the traditional funnel and outbound strategy.

• How the concept of inbound emerged, its role in times of crisis, and its connection with HubSpot.

• The main differences between inbound and outbound in terms of costs, relationships, and results.

• How inbound strengthens customer acquisition and helps reduce the cost of acquiring leads.

• How the LGPD (Brazilian Data Protection Law) impacts lead generation and demands more transparency.

• A practical example of segmentation and using influencers to connect brands with their ideal audience.

Come on? 

What is Inbound Marketing?

Taking the exact definition of the source (from Hubspot) (and later you will understand why we use HS as a source), we can say that " Inbound Marketing is a set of techniques that involves creating and sharing specific materials for a certain audience that will be impacted according to what they search for on the Internet". 

In other words, inbound is a set of communication and marketing strategies focused on attracting the attention of a particular audience. 

And doesn't that already exist within the marketing funnel? Yes, but not in the way these techniques are worked in inbound. The funnel is a funnel (swear?), and that means it is an entry and exit that starts at the top and ends when the lead reaches the bottom of the funnel and becomes a customer.like this: 

Inbound, we have the famous Flywheel, in which the sales cycle is thought of and structured as a big cycle, that is, it has no end. Friction between marketing/sales actions and the customer must be continuous. 

In this scenario, it is necessary to nurture and keep the customer satisfied at all times and at any stage of the journey. Attracting, engaging and enchanting are the forces that keep this circle in constant rotation. For this, it is necessary to have great organization and synergy between the teams. 

Anyone who thinks that these two strategies must go separately is wrong. Quite the opposite! The funnel and the flywheel must go together and in harmony so that you can get better results and more easily identify the stages of your customer's journey. 

How did Inbound Marketing come about? 

Remember that when we brought up the concept taken from Hubspot up there, we talked about fonts? So, although inbound strategies have been explored for a long time (as we explained at the beginning of the post), the term Inbound Marketing started to be used in 2006, when Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah founded HubSpot (Software for Marketing Automation, CRM and sales).

But popularization began to occur even in 2009, when Hubspot's founders themselves released the book Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google.

Obviously, since then, this concept has improved, and so has the way it is used in companies! This is because, as we have already mentioned, the way of communicating changes all the time, so it is normal that communication strategies also change.

A few years ago, advertisements were made by radio, then by television, newspapers and magazines. Today, in less than a second, you talk to your audience on Twitter, Facebook (he's not dead yet), Instagram, TikTok, etc. 

Returning to the history of inbound, Brian Halligan's achievement was to put into a concept the surgical observation of how the sales process was already changing at that time. Email lists, advertisements targeting very different and non targeted audiences and more and more money being poured into the untargeted masses. In his eyes, these practices were not reaching the right audience. 

Well, he was right! The inbound marketing strategy with quality content, aimed at the right audience, made many companies go through the 2007 and 2008 crisis growing in revenue. And not only in 2007/08, but the pandemic that took place in 2020/21 also showed how consumers no longer have a "bag" for brands that just want to sell. 

The consumer understood that he has the power of argument and voice, and that this voice in union with the tribes has a great impact on the useful life of brands. 

Read too:

• 5 ways of how to capture students
• The 10 Whys of Having a Blog in Your Marketing Strategy
• What is Inbound Marketing and how to prospect
• How to decrease the rejection rate and increase the conversion

Inbound Marketing vs Outbound, what's the difference? 

Outbound marketing has been around for as long as advertising has been around! And yes, it worked for a long time and, depending on the company's strategy these days, it still works, but alone, it tends to generate more expenses than converting visitors into leads. For you to better understand the difference between Inbound and Outbound, here's a comparison: 

Image: Magnet symbolizing the attraction power of inbound marketing in bringing new customers to your brand.

How will Inbound help you attract customers?

If you've been able to follow our reasoning so far, you've certainly already understood that Inbound goes far beyond selling. The purpose of Inbound is to generate relationships, create a real bond and be part of the consumer's life. 

This type of bond is that thing that makes the consumer feel part of something, that creates memories and leads that consumer to be an advocate for your brand. 

This does not mean that it should be the end of Outbound, but that Inbound should be part of your routine as a brand and as a company. 

When you create niche content and distribute it on the right platforms, where your ideal customer actually is, the chances of reaching a potential buyer — and drastically shortening the buying journey — are much higher than with spray-and-pray tactics.

According to studies from HubSpot, generating leads through inbound marketing can be up to 62% cheaper than outbound marketing, which clearly shows why this approach is so strategic to reduce customer acquisition costs and scale your lead generation.

Attracting customers, to put it very simply, is a strategic job of attraction. And that regardless of whether you use inbound or outbound strategies, the sales process is directly related to the techniques you use to make your brand or product attract more attention than the competition = attraction. Right?

Keep this in your head: sell = attract. 

However, in 2025 you can’t talk about lead generation without talking about LGPD-compliant lead capture. Brazil’s General Data Protection Law (Law nº 13.709/2018) requires transparency about what data you collect, for what purpose and for how long, as well as a clear legal basis (such as consent) to use this information in your marketing activities.

In practice, this means designing forms, landing pages and automation flows that respect the law: explicit opt-in, an accessible privacy policy and easy ways for users to update preferences or withdraw consent. This way, your inbound strategy grows with trust, reduces legal risk and strengthens your brand reputation.

That said, it was easy to understand how to use inbound marketing in your acquisition strategy and even how it can help you define strategies on how to improve customer service. 

The main inbound strategy is to make your lead interested in what you have to offer, for that, strategies focused on relevant and connective content are used. 

This process of working on more niche and complex content makes the attractiveness more targeted. Want an example?

Let's look at the audience of mothers and fathers of newborn babies. One of the needs of this couple is to buy diapers, right? If you have a diaper brand, you will probably invest in TV commercials, magazines, some guerrilla actions, social media, etc.

Thinking strategically, do mass media such as television, magazines and guerrilla actions reach your audience? Yup. But do you agree that this type of action reaches a much larger number of people than those parents who are, in fact, looking for diapers? You will likely impact children, teenagers, childless men and women, including those who don't even want to have children. 

Conclusion: you will invest a high value in this type of media to count on the "lucky" parents with newborn babies to see your action and connect with it (because it's not enough to see, you have to connect). 

For big brands with big budgets to make available for advertising, it might be okay to invest that amount, but if you need to choose more specific actions, that matters! 

Now, how about choosing a digital influencer who talks on social media exactly about maternity/paternity? This person who only talks about this topic already has a niche audience: people who are interested in maternity/paternity topics. 

This influencer has already done his job of selecting the audience, he already talks to this audience. In this case, just insert your brand into his routine. Ah, speaking of measurement, currently, you can create specific campaign links for this influencer and ask that this link be used by him, so you can measure, in a more assertive way, the number of people who became customers through that person. 

This is how inbound works: connecting. 

As you can see in the image of the flywheel above, inbound you work all the steps constantly: attract, sell and retain the customer. Each step of the sales process is related, and this constant friction is what will make your customer closer and closer to you. 

In fact, to better understand these capture strategies in the moment we live in, it is worth checking out this post here on our blog: Marketing 5.0, get closer to your potential customers.

Frequently asked questions about inbound marketing and customer acquisition

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is a set of communication and marketing techniques focused on attracting a specific audience through relevant content instead of interrupting people with generic messages. It involves creating and sharing materials designed around what people are already searching for online, connecting brands and consumers in a more natural way. Rather than being just a sales strategy, inbound works on relationship building, nurturing, and trust, which makes the buying process more fluid, strategic, and aligned with customers’ real needs.

What is the difference between inbound and outbound marketing?

The main difference is that outbound marketing goes after customers in a massive, interruptive way, using channels such as radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, and poorly segmented campaigns. Inbound marketing takes the opposite route: it creates specific content for a well-defined audience, who discovers the brand through their own searches and interests. While outbound tends to be more expensive and less segmented, inbound focuses on relationships, personalization, and cost efficiency, increasing the chances of turning visitors into leads and customers.

How did inbound marketing emerge and become popular?

Although its principles appeared as early as marketing 2.0, the term Inbound Marketing started being used in 2006, when Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah founded HubSpot. Popularization came with the launch of the book “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google” in 2009. Their key insight was to organize, into one concept, the changes in buying behavior and the sales process, pointing out that generic lists and mass campaigns were wasting budget. Inbound grew by proposing high-quality content targeted to the right audience instead of unfocused mass communication.

Why is inbound marketing strategic for customer acquisition?

Inbound marketing is strategic for acquiring customers because it is based on attraction rather than interruption. It uses niche, connective content to bring brands closer to people who truly care about the solution. This shortens the buying journey, strengthens relationships, and makes the sales process more natural. Studies mentioned from HubSpot indicate that leads generated through inbound can be up to 62% cheaper than those from outbound, which reinforces its role in lowering acquisition costs and making customer growth more scalable.

How does inbound combine the funnel and flywheel?

In inbound marketing, the sales and marketing funnel is not discarded, but complemented by the flywheel. The funnel represents the classic journey from top to middle to bottom, until the lead becomes a customer. The flywheel, on the other hand, sees the process as a continuous cycle, where attracting, engaging, and delighting keep the wheel spinning. Instead of ending at the sale, the relationship remains active, with constant interaction between marketing, sales, and customers. When funnel and flywheel work together, it becomes easier to structure the journey, nurture relationships, and maximize each opportunity.

How does inbound help reduce customer acquisition costs?

Inbound helps reduce customer acquisition costs by focusing on efficiency and segmentation. Rather than investing heavily in mass media to reach largely uninterested people, it directs efforts toward those who already show intent or affinity with the topic. Specific content, distributed in the right channels, increases the chances of attracting potential buyers ready to move forward in the journey. According to studies cited from HubSpot, leads obtained via inbound can be up to 62% cheaper, which directly impacts budget, campaign profitability, and the sustainability of growth strategies.

What is the relationship between inbound marketing and Marketing 5.0?

In Marketing 5.0, defined as “technology for humanity,” inbound stops being just a good idea and becomes a strategic pillar. This phase focuses on using data, artificial intelligence, automation, and analytics to deliver real value at every touchpoint, without losing a human, empathetic perspective. Inbound provides the foundation for this continuous relationship: through relevant content and a well-designed journey, it enables personalized experiences, stronger bonds, and turns customers into fans and brand ambassadors, aligning technology with humanity.

How does the LGPD impact lead generation in inbound marketing?

The LGPD (Brazilian General Data Protection Law) directly affects how leads are captured and managed in inbound marketing. The law demands transparency about which data is collected, for what purpose, for how long, and under which legal basis, such as consent. In practice, this means designing forms, landing pages, and automation flows with explicit opt-in, accessible privacy policies, and easy ways for users to manage preferences or revoke consent. Lead generation thus becomes not only effective from a marketing point of view, but also safe, ethical, legally compliant, and trust-building.

Does inbound marketing completely replace outbound?

Inbound marketing does not have to, and should not necessarily, completely replace outbound. The text shows that outbound has existed since the beginning of advertising and can still work, depending on the company’s strategy. The issue is that, on its own, it tends to generate higher expenses and lower-quality conversions. Inbound appears as a complement, bringing more segmentation, relationship building, and efficiency in acquisition. Combining both approaches, with inbound as a strategic base, allows companies to use outbound more intelligently, with messages better aligned to the right audience and supported by content that creates connection.

How does inbound use segmentation and influencers to acquire customers?

Inbound uses segmentation to speak to audiences that are truly interested, and the influencer example illustrates this. Instead of spending heavily on mass media to promote a diaper brand to the general public, the strategy suggests being present alongside an influencer who talks specifically about motherhood and fatherhood. This person already gathers a niche, engaged audience that cares about the topic. By integrating the brand into the influencer’s routine and using trackable campaign links, it becomes easier to measure results and turn a qualified audience into customers.

Why is relationship so important in inbound marketing?

Relationship is at the heart of inbound marketing because the goal goes far beyond making a single sale. The idea is to create a real bond, become part of the customer’s life, and build memories that lead them to defend the brand. By working with relevant, niche, and connective content at every stage of the journey, inbound brings customers closer, educates them, and encourages them to come back. The flywheel reinforces this continuous view: attracting, selling, and retaining happen all the time, keeping the wheel in motion and turning satisfied customers into spontaneous brand promoters.