Today we're launching a new segment on the HubSpot blog - Inbound Marketer of the Week. In the coming weeks we'll use this feature to highlight great practitioners of Inbound Marketing.
When I was a kid, my parents subscribed to a newspaper that was 1/3 used-car ads, 1/3 grocery coupons and 1/3 local news. You can guess which 1/3 we used, and which 2/3 ended up in the fireplace.
Judging by the number of useless grocery circulars that litter doorsteps around Boston, not much has changed in grocery-store marketing over the last 20 years.
There is at least one exception: Whole Foods.
Instead of pushing useless newsprint on potential customers, Whole Foods marketing is focused on getting found. In other words, Whole Foods is an inbound marketer.
Here are four rules of inbound marketing that Whole Foods lives by:
(1) Create lots of content. Whole Foods publishes recipes, profiles of their vendors, forums and a lot more. Across all of these mediums they use the right tone. Their content is useful first, and promotional second, not the other way around. This means that their customers find them when they want to know how to make oatmeal cookies, when they want to learn more about where their apples come from or when they want to watch a cooking show. Here's a great video they put together about one of their beef suppliers:
(2) Use different content channels. Whole Foods content is produced and distributed in a lot of different places. In addition to the website, the blog and the forums, they have a Facebook page, they use Twitter, they do podcasts and they do videos. They realize that each one of these channels fits a different type of content and reaches different types of people. They don't expect all their customers to find them on a single site.
(3) Give back. If you want people to write about your company, you have to do things that make their lives better. You can create free tools, create helpful content, or in the case of Whole Foods, fund projects that help local farms like the Harris Farm in the video above. These projects are good for their own sake, but from a marketing perspective they give people a reason to talk about Whole Foods in an interesting, positive way.
(4) Make your brand accessible. If you want people to talk about your brand and link to your site, your brand needs to be accessible. Whole Foods' content and social media makes their brand very accessible. If you send them a message via Twitter they'll reply, if you ask questions in the comments of their blog, they'll answer you.
Do you know of other companies that should be nominated for Inbound Marketer of the week? Tell us about them in the comments.