Inbound Marketing
This domain tests the inbound methodology: buyer personas, the buyer's journey, the flywheel, and the attract-engage-delight stages. The exam expects you to apply inbound principles to real campaign and customer-experience decisions, not just recite definitions.
Core rules
- The flywheel replaces the funnel metaphor: attract, engage, and delight customers so they become promoters and reduce friction for future growth.
- Buyer personas describe goals, pain points, and decision criteria; they are research-based, not demographic stereotypes.
- The buyer's journey has awareness, consideration, and decision stages; content and sales interactions should match each stage.
- Smarketing means sales and marketing share definitions, lead handoff criteria, and feedback loops.
- Delight continues after purchase through onboarding, support content, and advocacy programs.
Worked example
A subscription business sees high churn after month one. Instead of only adding top-of-funnel blog posts, the team maps the post-purchase journey and finds new customers struggle with setup. They create onboarding emails, a setup checklist, and a help-center article, then track activation and churn by cohort. This is an inbound delight play: reducing friction improves retention and creates advocates who refer others, which feeds the attract stage.
Traps
Treating inbound as only blogging; ignoring sales alignment; building personas from assumptions; stopping at attraction and neglecting engage and delight; and measuring traffic while ignoring retention, referral, and customer feedback.