The Rise of Inbound Marketing

I've been finding many articles stating how inbound marketing is becoming increasingly popular and effective. Deciding between outbound and inbound marketing depends on what a company is trying to accomplish.

After reading HubSpot’s article, The Inbound Methodology, I have a clear idea of the process of inbound marketing. “By publishing the right content in the right place at the right time, your marketing becomes relevant and helpful to your customers, not interruptive.” This direct quote from the article describes inbound marketing. I believe it perfectly encompasses the best way to gain customers to be supporters and promoters.

The graphic to the left, from Inbound Methodology, shows the process of turning a stranger into a promoter. Brian Halligan writes in Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing that inbound is a way to “get found” by people already learning about and shopping in [a particular] industry.” This is the best scenario for companies who use inbound marketing. To “get found,” companies have to have relevant content. This content should have keywords that future customers might type into a search engine. The more keywords the content contains, the more likely the searcher will find the content. Consumers do research and it is in a company’s best interest to bring those customers in with relevant content.

Online Reviews can be extremely important to companies wanting to gain clientele. While most companies do not want to deal with online reviews because they are afraid of them, (It is true, online reviews can be a massive pain, especially if you do not know how to use it to your advantage) they are important to consumers. Social proof is when consumers look to others to either confirm or deny their feelings about a product or service. Before I go on a big trip, I consult TripAdvisor to see if the location and hotel is as good as I think it will be. If other people rave about it, I will be more comfortable with my decision. If others have bad things to say, I might re-evaluate my trip. In Everyone’s A Critic: Winning Customers in a Review-Driven World, Bill Tancer discusses how negative reviews can help your business, how responding to good and bad reviews is good practice, and how the online reviews can be managed with the right knowledge of how it works. Go check out his book for more specifics. (I will be posting more about his book in a later post.)

Another example is someone who is shopping for a car. Let’s say someone is a car enthusiast. This person constantly keep up with new advances in the car industry. He or she read blogs from several different dealerships and car brands, such as BMW, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and more. The potential customer keeps up with what is happening. Finally, it is time to update and buy a new car. This person gets a direct mail piece talking about an event happening at their local BMW dealership. It reads, “Come on in for our customer appreciation event!” This person decides to stop in and walks out with a car later that day.  Then this person tells all his friends about a great deal he got at the local BMW event. This is an example of inbound marketing and outbound marketing working together. This would be purely inbound if the consumer researched and read blogs. Then if the customer reached out to the dealership without the dealership prompting the relationship directly, it would be inbound. This scenario would change into an outbound situation if the customer received the mail piece without knowing about the cars BMW sells or following the industry. The mailer sent becomes an interruption in some cases and might be seen as an intrusion versus a helpful promotion. However, that does not mean a company should stray away from sending direct mail pieces. The way a customer receives the mailer decides whether it is inbound or outbound marketing.

As you can see, there are many advantages to inbound marketing. Inbound has new technology attached to it, making it more exciting and viral.

Congratulations! from Target

After reading “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did” from Forbes, I have gained some insight on how companies can use previous customer purchase to their advantage. Target’s use of customer purchase history to predict what they will buy in the future is a smart business practice. If a customer will end up buying that product, having a coupon will reinforce their want to purchase with that company again.

While I can see how getting coupons specifically for expectant mothers from a company would be slightly creepy, I believe the coupons are beneficial to that expectant mother. I believe changing to a booklet with other seemingly random products was a good idea. This will help alleviate any discomfort that might potentially happen if it was specifically for expectant mothers. They will be more likely to buy the products they were already expecting to buy. This is a great tactic for Target. It is similar to giving coupons to people on school supplies when school starts; however, unlike school women are pregnant at different times.

I do not believe this is a breach of privacy because you buy that product openly in that store. It is similar to getting coupons with the receipt after making a purchase at the local grocery store. This is a tactic used to get customers to come back for their future purchase based on what they previously purchased. Technology is growing and rapidly changing how consumers consume. The world will have to accept that this tactic will be a symbiotic relationship between company and consumer.

Insight is Key to Success

After reading "Where to Look for Insight" from the Harvard Business Review, some ideas became evident. The article states, "We recognize that many people arrive at great ideas more or less serendipitously, but we nevertheless believe that it’s possible for individuals to approach innovation in a more systematic way." I would have to disagree with that statement. I believe more times than not, people do not arrive at ideas "serendipitously.” I believe people do have insight coupled with intuition.

That intuition leads them to analyze what consumers are looking for and create whatever meets those wants and/ or needs.

For example, in #Girlboss by Sophia Amoruso, Sophia makes an extremely successful business through her idea to sell vintage clothes on eBay.  She

started it to make ends meet. Sophia knew that the revenue from her sales would cover her costs because there was a need for what she was selling. She also had the right intuition to know what her customer would want and how to market it in a way to attract customers. In the article, confluence is one of the seven insight channels. Sophia saw the online shopping trend and need for vintage clothes, and combined that into a good business. She knew her consumer and knew how to make herself different from her competitors. Customers could relate to the model because they were not real models, Sophia would dress the models head to toe so the customer could see how to style the outfit, and she edited the image in order for them to gain attention from consumers out of the plethora of other image that are out there. There was no luck involved, she simply made smart business decisions.

I think people are caught up with "serendipitously" when they see how successful something has grown to be when that was not the original intent. Sophia had the insight on how to innovate vintage clothing sales, which is why she became so successful years later. She never intended to have that success, but she was smart enough to know how to create it.