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.
There also has to be a completely different mindset for inbound marketing. People who seek specific targets are looking mostly for information. So when creating hubs, its imperative to provide content that's both interesting and enlightening.
I run a blogging platform at
http://rticlz.com and its amazing how many people see blogging, or hub marketing as they do link farms and classified ad blasts.
Its not the same thing at all. Without good quality content to arouse interest, splogs are just a waste of time and hurt the rankings of the platforms they're on.
Oh . . .
Good article BTW :)
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.
One thing I question about what you're saying Brian is about links. Links are outbound marketing. The equivalent to them for inbound thinking is what we're doing right here. Having a conversation :)
So to truly make inbound, social marketing work, your content needs to be compelling enough not so much to get links, but to inspire further discussion.
The more people who "link" up in the conversation, the more popular the topic (niche) becomes, and the more public the "players" become and the whole thing goes viral.
In the old days gurus became gurus because they called themselves gurus (or had their friends do it for them). Now, with social media, everyone has to prove their own worth by how they present themselves in discussions such as this, and in the value of the content they offer to the casual social browser.
Comment boxes, and places like Digg, StumbleUpon, MySpace, Facebook, and Propeller are the new links. And honesty is the new hypnotics for marketing.
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,
You can simply go to Wordpress.org and download a blog script. Then you have to upload it to your FTP and install it. You can also use the fantastico version of wordpress if your hosting company offers cpanel.
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.
thank a lot.
thank a lot.
There also has to be a completely different mindset for inbound marketing. People who seek specific targets are looking mostly for information. So when creating hubs, its imperative to provide content that's both interesting and enlightening. I run a blogging platform at
http://www.yamahdinet and http:
www.mahdimedia.net and
www.mahdivideo.net its amazing how many people see blogging, or hub marketing as they do link farms and classified ad blasts. Its not the same thing at all. Without good quality content to arouse interest, splogs are just a waste of time and hurt the rankings of the platforms they're on. Oh . . . Good article BTW :)
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