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.