INBOUND SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING AND INCREASED SALES IN SMES: A CORRELATIONAL STUDY IN THE PET FOOD INDUSTRY

New market trends have prompted Peruvian companies to apply techniques aimed at attracting potential customers, that is, to use inbound marketing, especially in the pet market, which has a profitable and competitive niche, driven mainly by the “pet-friendly” trend. This research aims to determine whether inbound marketing actions have a positive correlation with online sales. The methodology is quantitative, correlation, cross-sectional, and non-experimental. The target audience is men and women, between 18 and 35 years old who have made online purchases in the Peruvian pet food SME, Rapi Pet S.R.L. The sample is non-probabilistic and is composed of 248 people who completed a structured questionnaire of 24 questions. The results show positive perceptions of both variables with values higher than 70% after applying the barometer test, the reliability of the questionnaire was also established under Cronbach’s alpha of 0.922 and a correlation coefficient of 0.66 was obtained for the variables, as well as a p-value lower than 0.05 after performing the normality test. It is concluded that there is a positive relationship between inbound marketing actions and the increase of online sales in the company under study.