What Is Inbound Marketing?
Posted by Daniel Shlifer on Fri, Mar 19, 2010
What is Inbound Marketing?
I understand the answer to this question may be obvious to most readers because most readers of this blog are in the Inbound Marketing Industry. However, for the purpose of educating all others who may be exposed to my blog, I offer the following explanations:
Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing
Definition of Inbound Marketing (wikipedia):
Inbound marketing is a style of marketing that focuses on getting found by customers. This sense is related to relationship marketing and Seth Godin's idea of permission marketing. David Meerman Scott recommends that marketers "earn their way in" (via publishing helpful information on a blog etc.) in contrast to outbound marketing where they used to have to "buy, beg, or bug their way in" (via paid advertisements, issuing press releases in the hope they get picked up by the trade press, or paying commissioned sales people, respectively). Next best action marketing can also be applied.
Definition Of Outbound Marketing (wikipedia):
Traditional marketing (outbound marketing) is where companies focus on finding customers by advertising. This sense is related to intrusion marketing and Godin's term interruption marketing. Traditional marketing (outbound marketing) is where companies focus on finding customers by advertising. This sense is related to intrusion marketing and Godin's term interruption marketing.
Further descriptions and examples of both Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing:
Inbound Marketing Examples:
- Web pages: design and development of message by use of web pagesor web sites.
- Landing page: similar to above but with a more targeted message.
- Key phrase development: this is an important foundation for the above SEO process.
- SEO or search engine optimization: The process of making web pages more search friendly.
- Social media usage: delivery of marketing messages via Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, You Tube, Digg, Delicious, etc.
- Blog Posting: Uploading or posting of market related information.
- Link development: this is a very important process of attracting and securing inbound links from web pages, blogs, tweets & status updates of social media accounts of other individuals or business organizations.
- Internal lead generation: some form of internal systems (usually a lead generation or lead tracking software application) used to generate leads from existing web page traffic.
- Internal lead tracking: lead tracking software solution that allows for understanding all statistics produced from traffic conversion.
- Lead nurturing: the process of continued communication or nurturing of converted leads.
Outbound Marketing Examples:
- Direct mail
- Telemarketing
- Radios advertising
- TV advertising
- Print advertising
- Billboard advertising
Reasons that Inbound Marketing is now more effective than Outbound marketing:
- Higher ROI: In fact, search engine marketing is now the #1 return on investment when compared to all other marketing mediums.
- Inbound marketing is much more budget friendly: A small business is much more able to afford a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy.
- We have become more capable as consumers to "block" the outbound marketing message:
- Remote control
- Caller ID
- DVR
- satellite radio
The simple approach of providing relevant information as the individual or business is actively seeking, is becoming a more efficient, effective, budget friendly and most importantly, common sense method of delivering your messages.