Marketing 101: Inbound Marketing Explained
December 16, 2014
Marketing 101: Inbound Marketing Explained
In the majority of “marketing circles”, one is faced with the following question: “How do I engage people”? With the explosion of the “information age“, we have had to face new realities. One of which is the development of “inbound marketing“. By typing “inbound marketing” into a search engine, HubSpot defines it as “creating and sharing content with the world. By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your dream customers, inbound attracts qualified prospects to your business and keeps them coming back for more“.
We no longer wish to be engaged by door-to-door salesmen, pushy car dealers, or even a suggestion from a local retailer. Rather, we sit in front of our computer screen searching and shopping for items we’d like to prove as a worthy choice to purchase. We peruse the online inventories of local car dealers in search of a specific vehicle instead of pulling into the physical car lot to observe it with our own eyes under the watchful eyes of aggressive ever present car sale sharks.
Is this an example of a modern desire to avoid confrontational sales people? For me personally, I believe that it’s a desire for efficiency and accurate knowledge regarding practical purchases. What would we do without CarFax? We’d do exactly what our fathers did in the past. Purchase a used vehicle that had been in some undisclosed car accident with a twisted frame that required frequent tire changes due to uneven wear. As marketing professionals, our desire to be efficient buyers should help our realization of the importance in information dissemination.
Customers buy because of information and in many cases, make accurate, well thought-out decisions. A recent Fortune 500 company stated that over 95% of their first time retail visitors had already visited them on the web before ever entering their actual store. When planning your marketing budget, I recommend that you first consider how much you should be diverting from mass advertising and how much you should spend on in-bound marketing.
In closing, please consider these stats:
1. Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than traditional, outbound marketing.
2. 78% of Internet users conduct product research online.
3. In the past year, Web-based email usage dropped a staggering 59% among 12-17 year olds, who prefer to communicate via text, instant messaging, and social networks.
4. 78% of business people use their mobile device to check email.
5. 40% of US smartphone owners compare prices on their mobile device while in-store, shopping for an item.
6. 84% of 25-34 year-olds have left a favorite website because of intrusive or irrelevant advertising.
7. 57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog.
8. 41% of B2B companies and 67% of B2C companies have acquired a customer through Facebook.
9. The number of marketers who say Facebook is “critical” or “important” to their business has increased 83% in just 2 years.
10. Companies that blog get 55% more web traffic.
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