10 Reasons Why You Should Do Inbound Marketing

12 Jul 10 Reasons Why You Should Do Inbound Marketing

10 Most Important Reasons You Should Do Inbound Marketing

What Inbound Marketing Is

Outbound marketing can sometimes have the effect of driving a customer away by being too aggressive. Inbound marketing has the goal of attaining more customers and clients in a more organic fashion. The big idea here is to catch your future potential customers’ attentions by providing content that’s helpful to them, and supplying them with the type of information they’re looking for that relates to your business. They are already interested in your type of business, because they’re searching for help online for a problem that you already know how to solve. Now, all you really have to do is share the advice and helpful hints that they need in your web content, and they’ll find you very naturally online.

What Inbound Marketing Is Not

When talking about inbound marketing, it’s important for you to understand what it definitely is not, and that’s interruption (or outbound) marketing. Nobody likes uninvited phone calls, ads, emails or pop-ups. These are the types of things that inbound marketing is the direct opposite of. Aggravating interruptions are a huge pet peeve of many web surfers who are trying to work or enjoy some leisure time online.

Paid Email Lists vs. Opt-In Email Lists

Inbound marketing is not intrusive, but inviting. Most marketers who use an interruptive style probably are using paid email lists. Many times this is where all those uninvited emails come from that you have to spend several hours a month deleting. They pile up in your email, and sometimes engulf some of the most important messages that you needed to see, but that you probably missed because of all that extra clutter! This is just another headache that comes with outbound marketing that inbound can remedy by instead using opt-in email lists, where customers have a choice of whether or not they receive these extra messages.

Inbound Marketing is Powered by Creativity

The more creative the business owner is, the higher level of web traffic he or she will get when inbound marketing. Being more focused on your customers’ immediate problems will render wonderful results. For example, how-to articles on your website’s blog are very helpful towards people who are looking for hints and tips. When they see that you’re giving out this information organically as an expert on that particular subject, it’ll make them interested in visiting your physical location, or they’ll likely make spontaneous purchases there online at your website.

Interstitial Pages vs. Blogging

Inbound marketing utilizes creative and informative blogging techniques instead of interstitial pages. These are the pages that pop up right after a content page that usually show certain types of advertisements. Blogging allows the business owner to cater more to the specific needs and wants of their future potential customers in a creative, casual and entertaining fashion.

Keywords and SEO

One of the best strategies in inbound marketing is when Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is utilized correctly. This is when certain keywords (that are directly related to your customers’ online searches) for your business are bended well into the fun and engaging content on your website. For example, if a customer is looking for barbers in New York (or in any city for that matter), whichever barber in that area that has the freshest original website content with those and other similar keywords is going to be the highest on Google’s search results list, which is where you want to be.

Normal vs. Earned Social Media

Inbound marketing makes social media advertising much more enticing than interruption (or outbound) marketing. Most people know that the various stores and websites that you visit online help social media sites decide what ads to put in front of you. Inbound marketing caters to your habits as well, but not in a forcible way that just throws the business in your customers’ faces. Instead, they’ll be invited to products and offers that will make them want to visit that business and its website even more.

Inbound Marketing Generates Momentum

Inbound marketing has the potential of generating much more momentum than outbound marketing. When marketing outbound, customers’ wants and needs are always put in the front when creating content. If you as the expert on your business can help them solve that simple problem in the moment, they won’t forget you and that helpful article from your blog. In fact, they likely will share it with their friends, and bring even more customers with them to your business and/or website.

Banners and Ads vs. Quality Content Creation

Banners and display ads are quickly becoming a thing of the past as inbound marketing becomes more popular and utilized by business owners across the board. The content that’s created when inbound marketing is simply of a much better quality and is way less costly. The old way of using ads and banners is so inorganic and doesn’t naturally touch the customer. An informative blog about certain business topics would be of much more value to your future patrons.

Organic Visibility

Many business owners struggle with trying to decide whether or not they should use paid app reviews, or if they should utilize a more cost-efficient market strategy of being seen organically in an app store. As the website or business owner, you almost automatically know what your future customers need the most help with on a regular basis. So, it’s not hard to think beforehand about this. When they are online looking for helpful articles and information, they’ll likely run into your app that provides that specific type of assistance they need, and become permanent fans of yours. Besides, paid app reviews are dishonest and misleading.

Inbound Marketing Equals Lower Cost to Attain New Customers

Inbound marketing is always going to be a lot cheaper to produce than interruption (or outbound) marketing. Aside from the fact that it’s simply just a lot more pleasant to organically find businesses and/or the helpful articles and blogs customers need, outbound marketing is more depending on the amount of dollars that a business owner puts up, rather than the amount of time they should be spending thinking about what their future buyers desire.

Ads vs. Authoring Ebooks

TV, radio and print ads are very costly when compared to Ebook marketing in an organic fashion towards your targeted customer base. For example, hair salon customers would likely enjoy a free downloadable Ebook on the website of their favorite salon in their city that shows all of the different hairstyles that they could produce. The Ebook can have links back to the original website where the future salon customer could now read bios of the people who work there and maybe even schedule an appointment. Everyone loves free gifts, and informative fun-to-read Ebooks are perfect for your future customers. In most cases, after reading it they will already have in mind what they want by the time they get to your physical location. And, chances are they will share it with others they know who may be looking for a great salon in that area. What type of business do you have? What type of EBook would your customers enjoy that can inform them about the products and services that you offer?

Pop-Ups/Unders vs. Thought Leadership

Nobody likes pop-ups, and pop-unders are just as bad. Probably the only thing worse than when trying to spend leisure time online and having all those interruptions show up on the screen and get in your way are the times when you are actually working online, trying to be productive, and those aggravating ads come out of nowhere. It’s even worse when you try to avoid clicking on one and end up doing it by mistake. Before you know it, several of the pages (likely advertising products that you most definitely don’t want to buy) pop up that you have to close out in order to not get distracted from your work. If you work online regularly, these pages can terribly sidetrack you from what you’re doing, and interrupt your thought process. Inbound marketing is the direct opposite of this type of intrusive marketing, in that it uses thought leadership strategies on a regular basis. These business owners brainstorm what their customers desire, sometimes way before they are even found online by these future patrons. This is done by creating evergreen content, or articles that are always going to be helpful and will never get old to your basic type of customer who’s looking for the types of helpful hints and tips you’ll always offer.

Inbound Marketing Helps Narrow Down Your Audience

A big part of inbound marketing is narrowing down your audience. Whenever there’s a particular group of people in need of certain types of help and information, if you’re an expert it gives you an advantage to provide that information. What you create should reflect your thinking and, through blogs and website content, give your future clients or customers the type of advice that they would ask you in person. They will begin to look forward to your apps, article posts, and Ebooks, and it’ll all be because you decided to utilize a more organic, effective and cost-efficient strategy of inbound marketing.