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CHAPTER 1
Inbound Marketing: An Introduction
OBJECTIVE
The author strives to inculcate into the minds of the readers the art of Inbound Marketing which is a tactic to attract visitors or potential customers to buy a product rather than pushing a product onto them. It aims to give the readers an understanding the process that is followed for inbound marketing.
INTRODUCTORY CASELET: THE SALESFORCE WAY TO INBOUND MARKETING
Salesforce.com is very efficiently using inbound marketing for generating traffic as well as leads in the United Kingdom. Salesforce has identified that the purchase journey has changed in the contemporary world.This new purchase journey consists of threeimportant aspects:
• Now-a-days a considerable number of people search products on search engines.
• There is lot of user generated content available on social network platforms that does effect the purchase decision.
• People can now choose where and when to engage with a brand, plus what content they would like to consume.
Looking at these facts, Salesforce has come to understand that the actual sales people come in contact with the buyers much later in the purchase cycle as compared to the traditional purchase cycle.
Salesforce came up with the "Get Found" strategy, which helps it to get found by the people who are actively looking for help with the kinds of issues salesforce caters to. To implement this strategy, Salesforce used the "Content Rich Microsite". This involved building content-rich microsite filled with the kind of content the target market valued, thus, creating a value addition for the organization.
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Marketing is the heart and soul of any business. The main aim of marketing is to
Marketing is the heart and soul of any business. The main aim of marketing is to plan and attract as many customers as possible and convert these leads into a sale. Outbound marketing and Inbound marketing are two concepts which are getting big in the market and include the overall concept of contemporary marketing it self. For a successful business one needs to know and understand which inbound marketing efforts could work for the business. Literature suggests that the term was originally coined by HubSpot in 2005, thus, this concept is quite new.
The fundamental concept of inbound marketing is to provide content to the visitors on the company’s website which the potential customers want and in such a way that the potential customers are able to find it easily. Thus, Inbound Marketing is a technique by which company and its related information is made available easily to customers for their knowledge and decision making.
In the following chapters we will be discussing the inbound techniques, assessment of Inbound marketing efforts, etc.
1.1.1 THE CONCEPT OF INBOUND MARKETING
There are many ways of defining Inbound Marketing. It is the process of drawing the attention of prospective buyers by using content creation, even before such people are ready to buy the product.
Inbound marketing can also be defined as a technique for attracting customers to products and services through the use of content marketing, social media marketing and search engine optimization.
Further, Inbound marketing can be looked as a strategy which focuses its efforts on drawing customers, or leads, by using company-created Internet-based content, thus, making potential customers to come to the company site rather than marketers struggling to get their attention.
It strives to make it easier for customers, who are actively looking for goods or services on the Internet, to find what a particular company is offering.
Thus, inbound marketing has emerged as one of the best and cost effective options to convert strangers into customers and even become promoters of a product or service.
It would be good to know that content marketing is done by using a blog, and is a very good example of an effective Inbound marketing.
To sum up, some of the characteristics of the Inbound marketing are:
a. Inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content by using tools like social media marketing and search engine optimization.
b. Its aim is to attract or pull strangers to the business to become customers of the business.
c. Helps customers, who are active online looking for goods or services on the Internet. Such people are already searching for answers online, researching the industry, checking out the competitors, and trying to decide if they really need the company's service or product.
d. Aims at aligning the content which company publishes with the customer’s interests.
e. Aim is not only to convert strangers into customers but also into evangelists and promoters of the brand leading to more referrals and renewals.
Inbound Marketing is a bit different from the traditional marketing efforts (also termed as Outbound Marketing) where companies try to publish their Ads on TV, Newspapers, etc. and just wait for people to listen or read them and respond to them if they are interested in these services or products. We will be discussing the Outbound Marketing concepts in later sections of this chapter.
1.1.2 WHY INBOUND MARKETING BECAME AN OVERNIGHT SUCCESS
Inbound marketing has been able to surpass outbound marketing. Some of the primary reasons for this are:
a. It costs less than outbound marketing.
b. Unlike inbound marketing, outbound marketing tries to target audience when they are not interested, so it becomes a waste of time, money and energy.
c. 44 percent of direct mails,which is one of the tools of outbound marketing, is never opened. Thus, a waste of time, postage and paper.
d. 86 percent of people skip through television advertisements and change the channel when advertisements(Ads) are displayed. Moreover, TV Ads and Radio Ads are very expensive to create and broadcast.
e. The cost per lead in outbound marketing is more than for inbound marketing.
1.1.3 DOWNSIDE OF INBOUND MARKETING
Now that we have understood what Inbound marketing is and what its aim is, its time now to discuss about some of its disadvantages.
a. The audience of inbound marketing messages is very restricted as only those audiences are able to view such messages who have chosen to get them.
b. Companies have less control over what a potential customer may see while surfing through a company’s website. There is a high degree of chance that the audience might miss an opt-in offer.
c. Too much and too many kinds of inbound marketing content can overpower a prospective client and cause a company’s content to get misplaced in the shuffle.
d. With inbound marketing, it takes more time to understand the Return On Investment(ROI) as it is possible that an audience might not immediately be ready to buy the said product or service.
e. Inbound marketing also tries to establish two-way communication. The customer’s feedback and review of company’s brand or product or service is used to attract other people. Sometimes it does happen that a frustrated or unsatisfied customer may post negative comments instead of positive comments.
Thus, there exist a number of disadvantages associated with the Inbound marketing, but still the merits of Inbound Marketing far reach the demerits of the same.
1.1.4 SCOPE OF INBOUND MARKETING
The scope of Inbound marketing is limited. Though, it aim is to transform the strangers to the business into customers and eventually into promoters of the business’s product or service, but ...
