A Primer on Inbound Marketing

Here’s an assignment – In 25 words or less, describe what Inbound Marketing means.

If your response was “I have no idea”, I hope you are looking over your shoulder because your competition is getting ready to trample you.

Probably the most accurate answer to that assignment would be “There is no way to adequately describe Inbound Marketing in 25 words or less”, but I’m always up for a challenge, so here goes!

Instead of “telling customers what they want” Inbound Marketing provides content, Social Media participation, and Search optimization so customers find you when they are ready.

Wow, I hit the mark! But, of course, just scratched the surface. To understand Inbound Marketing well really does take a lot more than 25 words. But think of how things have changed over your lifetime – even if you are young. In the beginning was the ad….

As we know from experience (or watching Mad Men) marketing really took off as TV became a mainstream communication channel. Certainly there have been signs, billboards, and even print ads for a lot longer, but the availability of television, and its role as our primary entertainment platform, made it perfect for sharing the messages companies crafted about their products. Not to mention that you could show people in action and let them talk to, or at, the audience, which really created another dimension.

The thing about this now withering way of communicating was that it required marketers to try to assess what customers wanted and deliver a message that would resonate, which is a pretty inexact science. It also meant that you were blasting your message in a somewhat hit or miss fashion to everyone within earshot, often as not talking to people who weren’t interested. That has led to some bad consequences.

We, in the audience, didn’t always appreciate being talked TO, we actually wanted to be listened to. An unfortunate dynamic developed wherein consumers decided – sometimes quite correctly – that companies didn’t care what we wanted or needed, their goal was to convince you to buy their stuff. The constant repetition of “Buy This” messages often created a backlash mindset, where even when you did want to buy a product (maybe an automobile, or a couple of nights at a hotel) you might be as likely to avoid an advertiser because you had tired of hearing from him. And of course the “cost to conversion” ratios are pretty poor with traditional, outbound means. As we have become inundated with incoming sales messages (estimated at as much as 2000 a day) we have figured out more and better ways to filter them out (e.g. Tivo).

So, enter the age of Inbound, where the goal is to allow yourself and your products or services to be discovered by people who are already looking for you. One of the first ways savvy marketers learned to do this was through Search Engine Optimization. A driving force of the early internet was the search engines – remember AltaVista, WebCrawler, and Lycos? Google came on the scene around 1996 and still dominates. By familiarizing themselves with the algorithms used with Google, marketers could make sure that their online information had the right tags or keywords to show up as high on the results list as possible.

Of course, people have become even more adept at using digital tools, and SEO optimization is no longer enough, nor even the best strategy to pursue. Today the smart kids use many more tools and strategies, and pursue the goal of being as helpful and useful to potential customers as possible. I think this is best summed up by Todd Hockenberry, of Top Line Results, in his submission to the HubSpot e-book, The ABCs of Inbound Marketing:

Inbound marketing is about delivering the right content in the right place at the right time, thus creating marketing that people love.

Instead of interrupting with cold calls and interruptive ads, inbound marketing attracts people to your website when they’re interested in finding a solution (yours) to their problem. Inbound marketing has four key parts, each leading into the next in a seamless flow.

1) Focused and optimized websites, blogs, targeted keywords, and social media that attract visitors instead of interrupting them with annoying marketing messages.

2) Smart websites convert these prospects into leads using calls-to-action to highlight high level content, forms to gather information in exchange for that  content, and landing pages to convince people of the content’s value.

3) Prospects are assisted through their buying process using email lead nurturing, lead scoring, and follow up workflows, and closed-loop reporting to close those leads into customers.

4) Customers are delighted when smart content and lovable social media marketing delivers personalized content to keep them engaged while delivering ongoing value for the life the relationship.

So, instead of trying to figure out what your next ad campaign should look like, or what jingle or slogan will allow you to insert awareness into your potential customers’ brains, think about questions like these:

Who are my customers, and what do they need most?

Where do these customers go to get information?

How can I curate useful information that customers will seek out?

Once they find me, how do I help them see how my product or service could be of value?

What skills do I have that will let me be discovered, and what do I need to hire someone to help me with?

If you do need some assistance, please be sure to contact us here at Innovaision for a consultation, or look to some of the Big Dogs in the business like Marketo, HubSpot, or Duct Tape Marketing (we like to think we bring a more personal and focused touch to the table, but hey – good is good and these are all good partners to consider).

Once you begin focusing on Inbound Marketing strategies, you will have turned the corner into the modern world. Congratulations! And here’s one last helpful item, a great infographic about Inbound Marketing from thewholebraingroup.com.