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When we were in grade school, we learned in Physics class that work is performed by applying force over a distance. We also learned that simple machines use mechanical advantage to multiply force.
Simple machines are usually easy to recall: inclined plane, screw, pulley, lever, wedge, and the wheel & axle. They are the elementary building blocks of complicated machines; you can build any number of complex machines by using these basic machines in combination.
At HubSpot, our Inbound Marketing Consultants work with a lot of small and medium businesses to help them understand the leverage Inbound Marketing strategies (search engine marketing, blogging, and social media adoption) will give their company relative to Outbound Marketing tactics (cold calling, tradeshows, and advertising). After many years of pushing messages out and paying high advertising costs, you may be wondering if Inbound Marketing will be difficult or require too much work or time. What you need to realize is the leverage and amount of force you get when you use Inbound Marketing over Outbound Marketing.
The Leverage of Inbound Marketing Vs. Outbound Marketing
So, what kind of leverage does Inbound Marketing get you in comparison with Outbound Marketing? Well, let's go back to those simple machines we were learning about in Physics class.
Let's say you had to raise a heavy box 3 feet. To do this, you have two choices. You can lift the box straight up in the air 3 feet. Or you could push it up an inclined plane 5 feet. Though it would seem that inclined plane makes you do more work because it increases distance, really it's using mechanical advantage to multiply force. Though you arrive at the same height, the extra work combined with mechanical advantage gives you leverage. It's much easier to push a box on a solid surface than to just lift it.
Think about Inbound Marketing. Though you may get a whole lot of traffic to your site from buying enormous amounts of PPC advertising, it can't last forever. Just like your body will get tired doing all that back breaking labor without an inclined plane, your marketing budget will eventually tire out, too.
Inbound Marketing Multiplies the Force of Your Marketing Efforts.
When you use simple inbound marketing tactics in combination, it builds a powerful Inbound Marketing machine. If you write one fantastic blog article, it simplifies you marketing efforts. People link to that blog article, increasing your search rankings. That article then spreads to the social mediasphere, which connects you to more people who will link to and share your article. If the article has a lot of links, it will start getting found more easily in Google for keywords that are important to your prospect.
Though you may have spent more time creating your blog, coming up with a concept for your article, and writing it, you actually created more force using your Inbound Marketing machine to complete your goal and you did it without breaking your budget's back.
photo by katiek2
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