Inbound Marketing – What does that even mean?

You might find yourself sitting in a meeting where the term inbound marketing is being used, and you just nod your head and agree with what everyone else is saying because you have NO CLUE what it actually means. Let’s define it for you.

Inbound refers to marketing efforts that bring customers in, rather than having to go out to get the attention of your prospects. Inbound marketing promotions include e-newsletters, social media, blogs, videos, podcasts and other forms of interesting content to draw customers to your website. Search engine optimization (SEO) also falls into the inbound marketing category. Outbound marketing covers things such as direct mail; cold calling and telemarketing; print, radio and television advertising; and billboards.

You might also hear the term traditional advertising applied to some of the types of outbound marketing. As digiday.com stated, “… traditional advertising doesn’t permit a two-way relationship because it’s based on the premise of broadcast: the one-to-many paradigm. This means that the advertiser can only make an impression or get attention — in print, radio, television, and even some forms of digital — by talking to (or at) the consumer.”

Your customers don’t want to be talked to – more than ever, they want to interact. An important part of inbound marketing is to provide your customers with feedback channels, which could be your phone number, an online submission form, live chat, or a contact list if you have multiple departments and want to make it easy for the customer to reach the right person on the first attempt. Giving your customer at least one feedback channel creates a great direct link for your customer service and sales staff, and goes a long way to developing strong relationships with your customers.

Inbound marketing earns the attention of your current and potential customers by providing them with useful, interesting content. If you think your business can’t come up with content, or you don’t have the time to devote, get in touch with us and we’ll be happy to assist you.