What is Inbound Marketing?

You may have heard the term "inbound marketing" floating out there in the digisphere. It is a new fundamental marketing approach the WRM should know about and likely be implementing in some way in the marketing mix. Here's a brief primer on what it is, what it isn't, why it is good and when to use it.

Let's start with what it isn't. It's not the old school marketing, AKA "interruption marketing" or "outbound marketing" that we grew up with although these tactics are still widely in use today and can still be economic. "Outbound marketing" is the set of marketing approaches that actively put messages in front of prospects, usually without permission. These tactics include:

• advertising
  
• direct mail
• trade shows
• email blasts
  
• cold calling

"Outbound marketing", although the longtime standard, is not ideal for the marketer or the prospect as collateral damage is a matter of course-it's the carpet bombing of marketing. Many experience the message who shouldn't or don't want to, eroding brand image and creating extra costs for the marketer.

In contrast, "inbound marketing" is designed to have the prospect willingly come to you. This is because of the web wide framework you have set up that allows them to easily find you when they are looking for what you offer.

It sounds like SEO but it's bigger. The framework you have set up includes a comprehensive set of search engine optimization, social media, thought leadership and tools initiatives to insure that your prospects find you immediately whenever they are looking for what you offer via search engines or social media. Yes, you have search optimized your website and created lots of quality inbound links but you also have become an aggressive and consistent publisher of content, also search optimized, including blogs, whitepapers, eBooks, slide shows, videos, podcasts and news releases. You have continuous presence on the social media vehicles your prospects are likely to use, e.g. customer forums, wikis, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And you've created useful, relevant tools and/or fun viral media to also draw prospects to your website.

The beauty of inbound marketing is better targeting and greater efficiency-only those who are likely to buy actually come to you.

Now read this: "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of "inbound marketing" written by David Meerman Scott.

There's also an energetic Boston based company, Hubspot, which provides an inbound marketing methodology and services and who is a thought leader and evangelist for inbound marketing. David Meerman Scott is an advisor to their board. Check out their website and notice that they do eat their own dog food...all their marketing is "inbound marketing."


My personal dream would be to create all my marketing around "inbound marketing" and I tried to at my last company, Loyalty Builders. However, what I discovered was that for the B2B customer set we targeted, having solely "inbound marketing" wouldn't work for two reasons:

1. not enough of our prospects were active users of social media or even of search engines(see the first post of this blog for more on this).
2. not enough of our prospects knew that what we offered existed, i.e. they wouldn't be searching to fulfill a need they didn't know they had.

But we did effectively mix "old school" and "new school" marketing effectively and I'm sure the shift will be to more "new school" over time. It's more efficient for everyone.

Here are some actual results from another B2B company from 2008:

• 78% of initial inquiries were from paid outbound efforts, 22% from "free" inbound efforts
  
• 2% of the outbound inquiries closed, 12% of the inbound closed
• net, the inbound lead close rate was 6 times more efficient
• net, 65% of the total customers came from inbound marketing

So why wouldn't this company use "inbound marketing" exclusively? Because they wouldn't get enough leads to support their business model. But you know they will be pushing hard to maximize inbound leads at every turn.

So "inbound marketing" should be in every WRMs arsenal. If you have customers who use internet search or social media, you should be using it now as part of your marketing mix. If you have "long tail" customers, it's especially efficient versus outbound marketing. It will be more efficient than your outbound efforts although it may not fill your pipeline. You are likely to get your best cost per lead by build the best inbound strategy you can and filling in the rest with outbound.