What is Inbound Marketing? An Introduction
What is inbound marketing? Inbound is a marketing strategy about earning peoples interest.
Earning interest not buying interest. Advertisement is about buying people interest.
Inbound Marketing is a term for many marketing disciplines.
Content Marketing, blogging, podcasting, interviews, whitepapers, SEO, social media marketing, videos, etc., are ways to earn peoples interest.
All share the premise of attracting peoples interest. An Inbound Marketing Strategy is marketing you and your customers will love. Introducing Inbound Marketing as…
….as a way to leverages change in human behaviour and changes in the web landscape. Both have revolutionized how customers discover, research and interact with brands and business. The power in the buying process has shifted from the seller to the buyer, use that power to your advantage.
What is Inbound Marketing Defined:
In∙bound Mar∙ket∙ing
-noun
Any tactic that relies on earning people’s interest rather than buying it.
Traditional Marketing Interrupts
Traditional marketing strategy relies upon interrupting people to get their attention. Cold Calling, advertisements, email blasts are interruption forms of marketing.
This POEM article defines in the best terms
Interruption marketing was effective in the 1940’s. Today we are interrupted by something like 3,000 ads per day. And there are effective ways of filtering out these interruptions.
What is Inbound Marketing? Attraction vs Interrupt
How do you earn peoples interest? By creating content your target marketing wants to consume. How-to’s, whitepapers, case studies and articles. People are interested in reading, learning and getting answers. Not more sales and marketing literature.
Lets us look at why an Inbound Marketing Strategy works and then the ‘How do I‘ will be easy to see.
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“The Internet has fundamentally changed the way people find, discover, share, shop, & connect with people and brands your marketing needs to fundamentally change too”
What is Inbound Marketing? Fundamentally changed the way people find, discover and share
Discovery and research of products/services of any type begins with in a Google/Bing/Yahoo search engines.
and Search is an extremely popular online activity:
and the number of Searches is growing year over year.
People are spending vast amounts of time online
Why does Inbound Marketing Work?
Inbound Marketing works because it matches a need (how do I clean red wine stains?) with an answer (video showing how)
Inbound Marketing workds because 80% of people click on the ‘organic’ links in Google and only 20% click on the ads.
Use the 79% using Online Research for Products or Services
Create compelling content that answers the questions that people have. Google will find these answers and serve them to the people who are asking the questions. Capture these visitors information (name, email address) you now have a warm lead for your business.
Here is a infographic detailing how the Inbound Marketing Process works.
How would I use an Inbound Market for my Business?
All Inbound Marketing Strategies starts with content, Content is Central, Content is King, Content is the Linchpin, Content is the Keystone, content is everything in inbound marketing.
- Create content; white papers, case studies, blog posts, videos, podcasts that answers and educates your target market.
- Publish this content on your blog, Facebook Page, etc, and distribute it sympathetically via social media channels so your target audience will find it.
- Capture these website visitors with a compelling “Free paper on 10 magical ways to ____ and ___” paper/download.
- Nurturing these leads via email marketing campaigns.
Your website, blog, content, landing Pages, call-to-action buttons, lead generation, email marketing, blogging, social media, SEO, search engine optimization, and lead nurturing are all components of a successful Inbound Marketing strategy.
Content is Central is the foundation of all successful Inbound Marketing Strategies.
This blog posts discusses the importance of a blog and blogging and is titled The most Powerful Inbound Marketing Tool available to business.
This infographic details the difference between Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing here.
Marketing Takeaway:
Inbound Marketing is a very powerful marketing tool that will generate business leads. These leads cost less then traditional marketing practices. Content you produce has an infinite life span. And most importantly, Inbound Marketing is a competitive advantage and you can crush your competition.
Have you experience with Inbound Marketing?
Share your thoughts below in the comments.
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