Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is based on the concept of earning the attention of prospects,making yourself easy to be found and drawing customers to your website.
This is accomplished by producing content customers value:
- Blogs
- podcasts
- video
- eBooks
- newsletters
- whitepapers
- SEO
- social media marketing
In contrast, buying attention, cold-calling, direct paper mail, radio, TV advertisements, sales fliers, spam, telemarketing and traditional advertising are considered “outbound marketing.”
Change Your Mindset
In contrast to outbound and traditional marketing, where you have to beg, bug or buy your way into people’s attention, inbound marketing requires you to earn your way in. This means that you need to create something that your prospective clients will value. For example, this can be accomplished with blogs, newsletters, videos or podcasts.
The term is synonymous with the concept of permission marketing, which is the title of a book by Seth Godin.
Inbound marketing is especially effective for small businesses that deal with high dollar values, long research cycles and knowledge-based products. In these areas prospects are more likely to get informed and hire someone who demonstrates expertise.
How Inbound Marketing Works
- Attract Traffic
- Convert visitors to leads
- Convert leads to sales
- Turn customers into repeat higher margin customers
- Analyze for continuous improvement
