COMMENTS
To your point, I think PR is an effective outbound and inbound method.
Outbound in that you are working with targeted outlets/bloggers to have stories written about your company. Then a prospect reads the article and considers your company.
Inbound in that you can post summaries of these articles on your website. The updates can help from a content and SEO perspective. Also helps that the article can be found on the website and may be picked up by other sites where your prospects can find you.
Brian, I found this post both thoughtful and thought-provoking. The jungle to watering hole analogy was perfect. Consumers used to shop downtown. Now, they shop in suburban malls and go downtown to get mugged. I'm looking forward to the rest of the comments on this post. I'd especially be interested in your (and others') thoughts on whether price point, complexity of sale, etc. should affect the ratios.
I like the analysis, although it sounds like its meant to be at least partly self-serving :-)
The problem with inbound SEO based approach is that there are too many scams out there in the market. There is a glut of SEO gurus. It would be great to see some data about someone who switched to 90% inbound like you suggest.
p.s: Your site and Website grader are both terrific. This is not a criticism of your site/service.
Typically, I see inbound marketing as a long-term strategy for lead generation, whereas most outbound efforts can generate leads much more quickly. Have you found any inbound methods that have a more immediate impact?
Pran -- Thanks for your comment. I agree that the seo world is full of crap. I think seo is a small piece of the puzzle. My mission these days is to help folks transform their market engagement strategy from outbound, interruption based to inbound, permission based. Getting the meta data right on your site is important, but having something to say that is worthy of internet consideration is far more important.
Hi Jake,
That's an excellent point...I had never thought about it that way. I do think inbound marketing is for a slightly more patient soul than outbound marketing platform.
The one thing that can have a short-term effect is if you write something clever in a blog article that hits the front page of one of the social bookmarking sites. From time to time one of our articles hits the front page of digg and on those days we go from an average of about 1000 visitors/day to 16,000 that particular day. Although those 16,000 aren't all well qualified for the type of business we are in, there are a decent percentage that are and we get a decent short-term bump from it.
internet marketing is not SEO. internet marketing is absolutely, without a doubt the best way to get qualified leads to your sales team in the shortest period of time. If people can find you easily, navigate to a user friendly site and then self-select to ask a question or get information regarding a purchase, you are providing a service and meeting a prospect at the best possible time> when your product/service is top of mind and when they are actively seeking a solution. I have been involved in both traditional marketing campaigns AND internet marketing campaigns in the last year and there is absolutely no comparison in results. Let those elephants get to your waterhole.
Hi Ken,
I agree with a couple of your comments...
First, you do need a slightly different mindset for inbound vs. outbound marketing. If time is a zero sum game, it's not going to be possible to do all the same old outbound stuff and still do the inbound -- something's gotta give. I think on a marketers weekly list of stuff to do, they need to start crossing off more outbound and adding more inbound. The ironic part is that inbound stuff actually inexpensive from a dollars and cents perspective, but is expensive from an IP perspective. A smart person with a unique voice can do some serious inbound marketing damage without spending much money at all.
In my opinion, just the like the currency of the US economy is dollars, the currency on the internet is links. In order to make inbound marketing work for you, you need to be able to put something out there that is compelling, so that other thoughtful folks will link to it.
Illustrative analogy. I think there's something missing, though, and that would be a specification of when this strategy is most effective in terms how it's applied to companies and markets in different stages of each of their respective life cycles. For instance, eBay and Amazon are already e-commerce industry leaders who've developed successful hubs. I would argue they could benefit more from a focused outbound strategy and less of an inbound strategy, which is why I think Amazon now makes some of their customers' purchases available through facebook's social graph. To conclude my brief point of contention I'll say that as long as outbound marketing is done on a very personal level it will always be the most effective form of marketing. A recommendation or referral from a friend is still a form of outbound marketing, and nothing can beat it (not yet, at least :-)
Can you actually put a blog into your web site? How do I go about doing that?
Dick - Yes. The easiest way is to set up a subdomain like blog.yourwebsite.com and put the blog there and link to it from your website and link to your website from the blog. It can be made to look just like your website. We've done this for a bunch of companies at HubSpot. Just let us know if we can help.
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lead generation is the hub of the real estate business. I feel if you conduct yourself as a true professional, your clients will be more than happy to tell their friends and family. Don't do your best to gain a referral, do you best because that's what you're supposed to do. As a real estate professional you have to determine, are you doing this for the money or doing this because you love it. I do it because I love it, simple as that. If you want a real estate professional you can bond with, then call me, if you want someone to just show you houses and no show you your wants and needs/likes are real, then call someone else. I'm dedicated in making sure my clients have confidence in my service!
For many businesses, the internet has elongated the sales process. Consumers are now seeking more facts and experience quicker prior to entering the decision making process. Is that information easy to find and digest? Are the product/service reviews reliable and positive? Are pricing or product options confusing? Same old stuff, except now, very specific facts are sought and expected by internet savvy prospects. What is right for me? Will it suit my needs? Will it change with my circumstances? Perhaps marketing speak about an offering is a world apart from the facts and experiences of customers regarding that same offering? Some people would rather pick up the phone although many call centres these days seem to avoid incoming calls from people asking lots of time consuming and somewhat irritating questions.
The web is certainly content rich but why can’t I find what I’m looking for on specific sites? Content richness clearly doesn’t equate to valuable, relevant and timely information, especially when I’m not looking for yet more marketing speak. Indeed, it may be an excellent driver to a site or content within it, but if only visitors can obtain the right content quickly, then the migration from prospect to customer is aided and perhaps the path is proactively presented. By doing this in a real-time inbound marketing environment, which some prospects definitely prefer, it is possible to equip them with sufficient information to migrate them into the decision making process rather than the information gathering process. That’s what I think inbound marketing should do better than outbound i.e. help lead people into a decision making process, help them feel empowered to make the right decision for them!
Great above-the-line marketing and web PR with well-targeted outbound direct marketing should help drive inbound marketing activity. And as we capture more about our online visitors, their behaviour, their interests i.e. similar to what we’ve been doing with outbound for many years, then the better we will get at using such a real-time platform more effectively. Replacing outbound with inbound seems rather too idealistic, I believe they are inherently connected.
I agree that relative to inbound, outbound is very expensive, but it is a different channel and achieves a different outcome. This is acceptable if businesses we can continue to get smarter about who not to target as well as learning who to target. One of the goals should be to align inbound with outbound and vice versa. Well, that’s my thruppence anyway...
Initially, I do not so care with PR. But now, I get much knowledge about it. Thank you very much for share
I am a startup( ( flatlined 3 times three years ago and started a natural and healthy line of vinaigrettes & marinades that actually taste great. ironically I used to work for the AHA as a marketing director and sold cardio pharma drugs and do a lot of public speaking to get the word out about heart disease and women ) and am in the process of revamping my website. I am adding a blog to it because of my story and have found this very insightful, timely, and helpful. I am open to suggestions.
You have to draw people to your website and get the inbound traffic. To do that you must provide content that is valuable to your readers. Content that is informative or information, perhaps even entertaining.
This may include writing or both audio and video content.
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Alex said, "Replacing outbound with inbound seems rather too idealistic, I believe they are inherently connected."
I thought long and hard about this, and I have to not only agree, but I also have to go further and say, outbound can actually BE inbound if done correctly.
After all, you have to get the message "out" so people can be drawn "in" by the message sent.
Alex also said, "help lead people into a decision making process, help them feel empowered to make the right decision for them". And that's the significant difference between good marketing and bad. It really has nothing to do with the "outbound" method, (though buying a mailing list will only get you pissed off potential customers who probably didn't really opt in in the first place but were harvested.)
Amazon and eBay are authority sites. They don't really have to do much convincing to get traffic and buyers. People know who they are and that they'll get a good deal or a valid recommendation.
You and I have to work harder at it, but at the same time, we too need to get some authority exposure. This is accomplished by quality content that teaches. This goes way beyond just slapping a link in someone's face, and is the true distinction between mere outbound marketing (like the spammers do) and outbound marketing that acts as the Pied Piper leading people inbound back to your site.
Just thought I would share this if anyone is interested, I appreciate that it’s slightly off-thread. I am planning to run a project over the next few months that will see us export real-time predictive models developed by our inbound marketing system and use them as near real-time models for outbound targeting.
In effect, I am looking to compare the results of these focused real-time models with offline models with a view to a) better online personalisation, b) more effective outbound targeting, c) greatly reduced test and learn cycles, d) a higher level of optimisation.
The time it takes to build offline propensity scores for an outbound campaign is often prohibitive, and some organisations actually let the technical team dictate far too much – how upside down is that?! Not everyone believes that test and learn works in either inbound or outbound environments, but in my experience, it really has a great impact on marketing effectiveness if done right, using the right number of stages and channels.
Like Ken states and taking it one step further, what I am looking to do is use inbound to test and learn, then launch optimised outbound (i.e. based upon very recent experience) that will drive even better inbound - and to do this in a practical self-justifying way.
Of course, that’s just our side of the fence and nothing to do with creative or execution...which of course is another huge topic.
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I don't think this makes any sense - don't people often advertise, speak, cold-call and attend trade shows in order to drive people to the website? How is this different from SEO? Under your definition SEO is the only way to get business. How is it better than paid search marketing? And how is paid search marketing different than a direct mail campaign that drives people to the website?
@Laura.
I don't think seo is the only way to get business. I am advocating that marketers stop spending their time and money trying to interrupt the unwashed masses who don't care about what they are trying to sell with cold calls, spam email, radio ads, etc because most humans are getting better and better at blocking out these traditional forms of interruption based marketing. Society is sick and tired of getting interrupted and is getting more and more sophisticated at blocking it out (i.e. spam protection software, callerid, tivio, sirius radio, etc.). Instead of interrupting the unwashed masses who aren't listening, I advocate creating fantastic content that attracts links to your site from other related sites which attracts qualified visitors in search on answers and which improves your ranking on important keywords. In addition to creating fantastic content, I advocate actively participation in the blogosphere and social mediasphere which enables you to enter into a conversation with your marketplace as opposed to spamming them with unwanted messages that diminishes the value of your brand.
Bh.
@ Neita -- If you'd like me to take a look at your site and make a few suggestions, send me an email to bhalligan at hubspot.com
great blog, this is really informative. I like the way you guys are displaying the pro's and con's of both sides.
@Alex -- Thanks for your note.
I actually think the right thing to do is experiment with both inbound and outbound campaigns and measure the actual customer conversion per campaign.
I'll give you an example. In the past 30 days, we got 1347 visitors from this blog to our main website and 147 of those visitors converted into qualified leads. Doing inbound marketing in a vacuum is dangerous -- you need to look at the dollars (time is money) you put in and how those dollars return relative to traditional, interruption based techniques.
If you measure it this way, I betcha you'll start to see some good results from your inbound campaigns relative to your outbound campaigns.
One more thing, I feel like there is an "arbitrage" opportunity with doing inbound marketing right these days that is probably similar to the arbitrage opportunity that existed in the early days of television advertising. The thing that's different about this type of arbitrage opportunity is that it is sustainable. It is hard work to build up an online reputation and just throwing cash at an agency is not going to get you there.
One more thought for all of you...
When you think about your marketing budget, I'd encourage you to think about it holistically. For example, if you have a staff of 2 marketing folks who have been cranking out outbound marketing campaigns for years with a marketing budget of x where x equals the salary of the two employees in program spend then your total spend is 2x. When you start doing inbound marketing, you should be apples to apples about your spend. For example, if one of your people starts spending 50% of her time on social media and blogging (both are "free" from a programmatic budget standpoint), then you are spending 25% of your budget on inbound marketing.
Inbound marketing is about the widget of your brain, not about the width of your wallet. Measure apples to apples.
@Devin -- Thanks for your comment.
I actually think the types of companies that are best fits for inbound marketing are small businesses. On the internet, no one knows how big/small you are. It is more about the quality of your thoughts than it is about the amount of money you can throw at television advertising.
There is a great book called "The World Is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. He didn't have an inbound marketing bent to it, but his book applies to inbound marketing. The internet is the ultimate flattener of marketplaces -- it is a great time to be a left handed monkey wrench maker in Alaska because now you can reach all those left handed plumbers across the planet as opposed to just in your home town! (smile)
One more thing. Inbound marketing works especially well if you are targeting either a young crowd or a technical crowd. Young/technical people are much more apt to "engage" in conversation on the internet than old/non-technical people -- exceptions definately exist, but there is data out there to support this contention. If you are selling to an information technology buyer, you ought to be all over inbound marketing. If you are selling to retired factory workers, it might be too early for you.
"Have budget - spend it or lose it" syndrome. Imagine being asked to improve outbound campaign ROI and suggesting that costs will start to drop, quite a bit actually. Well, believe it or not, the stance of the corporate that I was contracting to at the time was to keep the volume of outbound as before, but proportion part of the cost of it to ATL advertising. So on the one hand, DM effectiveness improves and the volume of people junking outbound pieces drops, on the other hand, ... doh!
I think that outbound prospects should be targeted using two models. One to predict likelihood of responding and the other to predict likelihood of not responding. But the problem comes, as everyone has seen, is that predictive models are either to generalised and add less value or too specific and overused.
Before global contact rules were introduced, some poor folks were being hit by 40+ promotional pieces per year from one company, i.e. not including any of its affiliates. Not so remarkable in 1995 perhaps, but this was last year! :(
Let's be honest, helping customers on their journey is still quite a challenge because ... don't get me going now.
I have been working on my inbound marketing, I brought my websitegrader score up to 43 from 7, set up a google ad words account, post ads on other website and have am just working on a facebook page but I still find that the majority of my sales come from marketing in person with flyers to businesses. Not sure if it's because I'm 95% B2B or I just haven't waited long enough. It takes a lot out hitting the pavement for a couple hours every day but it really seems to generate leads.
@Chris Crawford -- Thanks for your note. A couple of thoughts:
1. Bringing your websitegrader from a 7 to a 43 is commendable, but you are really swimming with the unwashed masses on that scale. You should shoot for getting your score in the '90's -- that's when you've got some inbound marketing juice going.
2. I actually don't consider Google adwords and post ads "inbound marketing" per se. They can be effective in short-term situations to drive some traffic, but their prices are "efficient" and it is just another way of "interrupting" someone. I suggest you try to create some "remarkable" content on your site that is going to "naturally" attract the interest of other people on the internet who decide to link to you. These links drive traffic to your site and they also send a signal to google that you are worthy of high organic (not adwords) ranking.
3. I came up with the term "inbound marketing" and when I came up with it, I was referring to B2B companies, not B2C companies.
4. Inbound Marketing takes patience and it takes brainpower. It is about the quality if your thoughts, not the thickness of your wallet.
Stay at it. Go to HubSpot.com and check out the free webinars -- they will help a lot.
Bh.
I have done basically the same thing without Google Ad Words, and recognize that I still have a long way to go. I believe that continuing to add valuable content is the solid way to build this site.
My URL takes you to a flash intro that ranks between 20 and 24 ...depending upon the day. It is basically all fluff and content free. But I have other pages within the website that get a rating of the mid to high 40s. I am confused on what the true rating of my site is...The highest rated page?? I am not sure that it matters. Analyzing my stats, I see that many enter my website by a route other than my flash page. Perhaps a search engine drives them there.
Here is a funny video that illustrates the difference...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3yCB7AvvAk
Thanks for the article. Great one.
Inbound marketing requires hardwork and skill. Without the skill and understanding of context inbound marketing could make the days long and very lonely.
Outbound marketing can create busy fools - marketing people who equate activity success. This course of action will only temporarily protect the marketer from the bosses and shareholders.
thank you for ur sharing ，my site hope good
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I'm only recently aware of the term "inbound marketing," although in practice I realize that it's what we've been recommending to clients for years. Our particular company's focus, since we started in 1999, has been on high value content with the power to "inspire, inform and influence." Not always an easy sell, particularly through the first half of this decade.
Now there is a groundswell of awareness that content, indeed, does matter. In fact, we've always said "whoever has the best content wins," and this is starting to prove itself true over and over on the 'net. In our case, where we've made the best content for a client, their site's have organically risen through the search ranks, in some cases from total obscurity to Top 10. No magic bullet, no SEO gimmicks, just quality content planning and implementation.
I'm only recently aware of the term "Inbound Marketing," and am a quick and easy convert. Just sorry that I missed the forum in September.
I've tried to track down the origins of the term Inbound Marketing. I noticed there's no Wikipedia entry, although there should be one; or at least a description of Inbound Marketing in Wikipedia's "marketing" entry. Anything like this that can be used to help evangelize the concept to decision makers is really helpful.
Keep up the good work, and I look forward to following this on your blog more in the future.
Hi Russell.
Thanks for your kind words about "inbound marketing." Just like how "web2.0" seemed to nicely sum up the transformation in computing a few years back, I feel like "inbound marketing" nicely sums up the the transformation in marketing that's happening these days.
Brian.
Inbound marketing will be something that online businesses will have to effectively achieve first before they start any kind of outbound marketing campaign. You could never make it 90-10 but i completely agree that inbound marketing is becoming much more important. The internet has changed all of our lives and we are all becoming more informed because of it.
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In my view, inbound and outbound marketing both strive to better manage, promote to and develop customers. The dichotomy is being able to successfully balance the drive for optimal profitability and the best possible experience for the customer. Being able to successfully bridge the gap between the two should not necessarily be seen as straightforward since it can involve, depending on how established the business is, some significant challenges. Whether the business is online or not, does not excuse the fact that customers are still the same and therefore the business should attempt, as early as possible, to capture and maintain a complete picture of each customer and the states that they are in at all times. To be able to control how a business interacts and re-acts to its customers, we should provide a synchronised experience across all channels for inbound and outbound. Moving away from ad hoc campaign activities (it's amazing how much of this still goes on) to personalised, multi-step multi-channel initiatives and customer development programmes using the power of automated predictive modelling is what makes all this smarter, easier and more cost effective for the business in the long term and better for the customer throughout their life-cycle.
As a user of Hubspot's paid tools and devotee of the "Hubspot Methodology", I couldn't agree more with Brian's ideas about marketing in the internet age.
All I can add is to suggest that creating rich content and becoming a hub for your industry can be really expensive - especially if content is generated in-house. Moreover, the price goes up as your competitors try to accomplish the same goals.
I propose that these facts make social marketing and user-generated content not just arrows in the marketing quiver, but bare necessities for anybody trying to do what Brian recommends.
I don't want to imply that it's easy - or a panacea - but I think almost all companies would benefit from a well-conceived user-generated content program of some kind.
Thanks for the great discussion!
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I am very interested in the application that Alex Berry said he is building. I think the future of marketing lies in understanding what people are doing socially through real-time analytics and leveraging that to produce targeted marketing offers. Without the inbound marketing you are missing a huge opportunity to gain insight on your customer. Without the outbound marketing you have no chance to send targeted messages at the right time to the right person through the right channel. I think they are very complimentary things and one would not be as useful as it could be without the other.
great conversation. thanks for starting it up.
i already read all of your comments,.,i think all is very terrific and relevant,.,.,thanks,.,.
Internet marketing definitely help business but they are other marketing methods that are very beneficial too.For example, Branding getting yourself known on line.
Some days ago I went throuch a few of your videos on marketing. One of them on business blogging went through details of how to host your blog on your site. I want to go back to it online or offline but now I cannot it. Would you mind directing me to it.
The learning I have go through in articles and video makes nonsense of the frequent argument that internet marketing.I don't think after going through stuff it will be possible for some to convince me that it doesn't work.
Internet marketing is traditional marketing adapted to our day and time. The quick we see that the quick we will benefit.
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hi,
i have recently completed a website mogamebo.com and i am doing the SEO for it.I checked for grading on websitegrader and found out a suggestion to include blog for my site. I did setup a wordpress blog in subdomain blog.mogamebo.com in my bluehost hosting account but still when i check my site on website grader it still prompts to setup the blog, please suggest what is the problem
ujwal,
You want to make sure search engines know your blog is associated with your site. The best way is to add one line of HTML to your home page. Here are the instructions: http://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery
You should also have a prominent text (not image) link to your blog on your home page, with the word "blog" in the blue underlined link text.
There are outbound elements that support inbound, and inbound that support outbound. Inbound and outbound are the extremes of a spectrum.
A blog has both inbound and outbound components. RSS is outbound. The inbound of Twitter, trackbacks, and SEO are there to get you the RSS subscription.
A website is there to get subscriptions for permission email. The website itself uses blogs, twitter, and SEO to pull you in, so you can use the push of permission.
You need both direct marketing and brand. The B2B buy will be a direct marketing proposition supported by brand. The B2C buy can be pure brand.
The claims made here confuse the reality of the distinction between B2B and B2C. B2B is long, five or seven, or more exposures, possibliy frequent and forever. B2C can work with one shot, or a series of one shots via RFM campaigns. Similar, but not the same.
Good content.Thks for sharing
I like the idea on converting outbound marketing into inbound marketing. Yet i do believe that it is expensive because adwords bids are too high already.
If you go to blogging using the target niche it will take time to develop the PR and traffics. Plus the Google localization will bring your traffics to local only.
In this case, the cost of Outbound marketing in my belief is still less expensive than inbound.
Very good article man, this was really helpfull but i still got a lot of reading to do so good luck!
Our site elisesanchez.com has benefited greatly from this blog. I recommend it to anyone in the biz who will listen. Thanks for your helpful tools and insight.
Our company
IT Computer Support NYC just recently began using social media (Twitter, Digg, etc) to draw in traffic to the site. Anyone have any general suggestions on conversions it would be appreciated.
Great Article.
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Wow this inbound marketing concept is gold!!! It's just lit a creative fire in me, thank you so much!!! I've gone through everything on your site, it's great. I have a couple of clients that will do so well with inbound marketing, one in particular and I have a really great idea for an inbound marking campaign for their tourism business but but how do I go about charging them for the idea and concept? How is this normally handled? Is it something you do? Not sure as I've never been down this road before, but I know I'm going to enjoy it!
Great post, I learned quite a bit from all of the interesting content in this post. I will be recommending this to my classmates to look at on @newmediadl.com.
The analogy of hunting for prospects where they congregate is brilliant. Reaching prospects by phone is getting tougher and tougher. Most enterprise buyers are spending the first half of the traditional buying cycle by themselves, on the web (possibly in their PJs). The days of enterprise decision makers setting aside an afternoon to meet with sales reps for IT solutions in order to stay current in their field is long gone. It takes 20+ calls just to say hello for the first time to that decision maker. In the meantime, he or she is spending many hours per week on the web, reading, researching, and keeping up in their field. You want to hunt down that new prospect? Try hunting at their favorite internet watering hole. And forget your gun. Bring engaging content instead.
I work primarily with high-end Contractors, Painters, electricians etc. I'd say their primary market would be 40-65+ year olds. When I talk about using blogs, facebook and twitter many think I'm weird. The response is most 45+ year olds won't (at least now) be using facebook and twitter and probably aren't blogging much. So how how do you explain inbound marketing to service companies who still spend thousands on direct mail and yellow pages? My thinking is someone younger who do use FB, Twitter and blogs, might find a site, a blog and post remarkable and share it with his or her parents and say, " I just read about a contractor who remodels a home this way...not that way...I love their site and blog...you should definitely consider calling then."
Any other ideas or ways to talk with guys with an older audience? Someday the older audience will be us.