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I talk to several marketing executives per week and my favorite question to ask them is about how they are building sustainable lead generation machinery for their businesses to grow. In response, I typically receive a similar set of responses: trade shows, seminar series, telemarketing, email blasts to purchased lists, "pr" (press releases), and maybe some advertising. I call these techniques "outbound marketing." There are two things these outbound marketing programs have in common. First, they all cost of a lot of money. Second, they are all becoming less and less effective over time as people like you get better at better at blocking out these traditional forms of interruption and you turn to search engines, bloggers, and peers on social media sites to more effectively learn and shop.


The thing about the world today is that it is "flattening" in a way that allows good ideas to rise to the surface more efficiently than ever. Before I started my current company, I was consulting for venture backed startups with large marketing budgets. While I was doing that, I was occassionally contributing to my business partner's blog who was writing a couple of times per week between classes and thesis work at MIT and spending zero dollars on it. The juxtaposition was amazing to me. My business partner's (Dharmesh's) blog was getting 5x more traffic than any of the venture backed startups I was consulting for that were spending millions on the outbound marketing programs like I described above and typically had staffs of 3-4 dedicated marketing professionals. Dharmesh's blog articles were able to generate many links which sent traffic to his site, these links informed the search engines that his blog was important which moved him up the rankings sending him more traffic, and all this traffic meant that he was getting talked about in the social media sites (i.e. Digg, Reddit) sending him even more traffic. The links, the search engines, and the social media sites created positive reinforcing loops that produced a snowball rolling down a hill effect. Unlike even 5-10 years ago, if you say intelligent/creative things about your industry, those ideas are much more efficiently discovered and spread.

 

It turns out that to really crank up your traffic and leadflow, the key is to stop thinking about efficiently allocating your dollars toward traditional outbound marketing programs into increasingly resistant audiences and to start thinking about efficiently allocate your brainpower/creativity into creating and improving your modern marketing assets consumed by increasingly receptive audiences.

 

So what's a modern marketing "asset?" Well, if you work for Ford, your assets are inventory, factories, machine tools, etc. If you are a modern marketer, your assets are web pages, links into those pages, organic ranks on keywords, and individual online reputations. Just like in a manufacturing company, you want to efficiently create more assets (i.e. web pages, blog articles) and improve the qualify of those assets (i.e. search friendly pages, links into pages, page submissions to social media sites). The improvement of these marketing assets costs virtually nothing other than creating a little steam from rubbing braincells together and it works a heck of a lot better.

 

So, when your boss delivers you the bad news that he is cutting your marketing budget, but he wants you to meet the lead goals outlined prior to the budget cut, I recommend putting your head down and starting work on your inbound marketing strategy for the organization by creating more assets and improving the quality of those assets in a systematic manner. It will work better than the more expensive forms of marketing and it will cost you little to nothing to implement, other than than some creative thought poured out onto the internet.

 

This is primarily my company's mode of marketing. I'd be happy to hear from folks have comments on this approach...

 

 

internet marketing kit

 


Posted by Brian Halligan on Tue, Mar 25, 2008 @ 07:24 AM

COMMENTS

My experience as a marketing guy is that clients often have untapped content within their organization that I encourage them to unleash. Most businesses have subject matter experts with tons of "inside" expertise, which is often what they leverage to persuade new clients to buy their products or services. When that same expertise is "repackaged" as a blog entry or web content, it serves the same function to a potentially much wider audience. Plus, the content has the added bonus of helping with SEO. Outbound marketing is not going to go away, but it also can be leveraged to improve web marketing results. Every ad, trade show booth, seminar, direct mail piece, etc. should have a hook to drive traffic to your website. In both cases, it is a matter of taking what you have and making the most of it.

posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 8:12 AM by Paul Lavenhar


very useful article for a startup like us(www.findnearyou.com). Thank you.

posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 9:11 AM by ram


This is the perfect time for businesses to start thinking about outside the box.
Leverage the assets you may not realize you already possess.

posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 2:09 PM by Shama Hyder


Great article! As a realtor, I find that newspaper ads and direct mail are the most expensive and least rewarding method of advertising. The highest positions I've found so far on the search engines have actually come from blogs I wrote...work smarter, not harder!

posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 5:00 PM by Dan Kalleres


Brian, interesting writeup and very true. Would this avenue of marketing hold true for all types of industries? For example, I am a web designer/marketer for a large modular construction company. We focus on b2b and web lead generation is basically my job in a nutshell. However, when I suggested to my marketing supervisors that we may want to try social networking, they refused the idea because our target market does not take advantage of social networking (baby boomers). Is this correct? Do you have any suggestions?
@Paul Lavenhar - Your comment is right on the money Paul.

posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 5:36 PM by Daryl Auclair


Great post, Brian. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on actively marketing to those that are predisposed to purchase (on one hand, you have the Google AdWords juggernaut, but on the other, I'm trying to put together showcases of work done by creative folks, enabling people to choose creative service providers based on the work they've already done)? Do you think this kind of marketing activity falls under inbound marketing or outbound marketing?

posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 7:40 PM by Cory von Wallenstein


Cory, I am the type of client you are seeking - an agency that sometimes outsources web work. The only place I would look for a web designer is on the web. Usually I am looking for a technology specialist or someone with specific industry experience, so I would suggest your SEO approach be geared to various web niches. I would expect to be able to find web guys like those you feature on your service by Googling them.

posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 8:10 PM by Paul Lavenhar


Paul L -- Great comment...violent agreement w/ you. Bh.

posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 2:06 AM by Brian Halligan


Hi Daryl -- I think inbound marketing would work well for you in the modular construction industry. Babyboomers are coming online in droves and are moving beyond just Google to RSS/blogs and social media sites. In fact, I read that the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is the over 35 crowd and that it is moving northward from an age perspective.
If you are not finding areas on the internet that gathering points for your industry, start your own. Start a blog and then start a social bookmarking site -- for an example, see links.hubspot.com.

posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 2:10 AM by Brian Halligan


Cory -- I'm not that high on the Google morphine drip (my term for "Google adwords juggernaut"). By definition, each marketplace is getting more and more "efficient" over time and the arbitrage opportunities will dwindle over time.
I am alright with adwords as a supplement to creating great content that others will find "remarkable" (stealing Seth Godin's term) and want to link to which drives up organic ranks, but I get scared when I hear about businesses and entrepreneurs who are overly reliant on Google adwords.

posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 2:16 AM by brian halligan


Thank you for the follow up Brian, I appreciate your encouragement. I have convinced my company to start a blog. Now, I am struggling to find that untapped potential Paul was referring to. Since construction is not my field, my knowledge is limited. It has been a task trying to find linkbait, but I have a few angles I am willing to try. I enjoy hubspot and your webinars, thanks for everything.

posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 2:28 AM by Daryl Auclair


Thanks once again for some more wonderful advice. I too do not see how a company can rely solely on Google Adwords alone. Your best bet is to diversify your advertising techniques to more than just one place.

posted on Thursday, March 27, 2008 at 4:02 PM by NewSunSEO


Hi i have appreciate your post. This time internet marketing on boom. If you are not finding areas on the internet that gathering points for your industry, start your own. Start a blog and then start a social bookmarking site its nice for you..

posted on Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 4:11 AM by Spartan Internet Consulting


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