Why Does Inbound Marketing Make Sense?

OK, a small step back to understand just what inbound marketing actually is since there are a lot of people that don't yet know about it and how powerful a process it can be as use of the internet continues to grow...what an understatement that is!

Inbound marketing is the process of creating relevant internet content that is well optimized and promoted for your target audience to increase traffic, along with the implementation of effective conversion tactics that will generate inquiries/leads and through the use of marketing and competition analysis tools allow your company to review and refine your web development initiatives to achieve the maximum ROI for your marketing dollar. Simply put:

Traffic
-Content
-SEO
-Promotion

+ Leads
-Conversion
-Landing Pages
-Tracking

+ Results
-Analysis tools
-Competition Evaluation
-Lead Nurture

= ROI

In some recent posts these subjects have been talked about individually (improving traffic, generating leads, evaluating results) and you can be certain that there will be more in future.

So...why does this kind of process make sense today? After all, look at the results that were achieved by companies like Coke, Nike and Johnson & Johnson. What has changed that would require a different marketing process than these great companies used?

These companies (and of course there are many others) were built up for the most part before the public access to the internet was developed and as a result they had to use conventional outbound advertising and marketing practices to build their businesses. Television, radio and print media were all used extensively to make certain that these companies were in our collective minds on a continual basis and huge $$$ were spent to make that happen! Have you heard the recent news about these traditional media companies? They are in contraction, why? Because we are blocking this outbound activity! Are you on the "Do not call" list? Do you have Sirius radio or some other ad free radio service? Do you have a DVR so that you can fast forward through the commercials? ...and the list goes on. Here's the final nail, we as consumers now have the ability to self research what we want with...the internet. I don't know about you, but I don't go to trade shows anymore to find out about stuff, I go online. I don't go to a store when I want to do research on my new TV, home theatre, dishwasher, renovation project, insurance, vacation etc. I go online and I'm not alone...billions, BILLIONS of queries are going through Google and other search engines every single month.

The continuing expansion of the internet as a means of information sharing has fundamentally changed the relationship between business and their customers and that is why inbound marketing makes sense today. Put your company in position to deliver information (content/traffic), respond effectively to inquiries (conversion/leads) and measure and evaluate what is going on (analysis/results) and you will achieve the business outcomes you're looking for. Don't want to engage in this process? It may cost your business more than you can imagine.

We're at the edge of the future!

Andy Xhignesse

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