Heard about “inbound marketing”? If not, you will.
Inbound marketing is about customers finding businesses, rather than businesses finding customers. It’s the same basic goal, but with a completely different strategy that is based on how consumers act today.
Think about it. How many commercials do you fast-forward past? How many on-line ads do you ignore? Most likely, the answer is most or all. That’s because they’re interruptions. As viewers/users, we don’t like interruptions. We like getting on with what we want to see and do – and when WE want to see and do it.
Thus, the theory goes, many of us basically tune out traditional “outbound” marketing.
Instead, we do our own research and search when we want information, plugging in a few key words and seeing what comes up. Or we go the modern version of old school: getting the opinions of friends and others we trust on-line. That’s where content marketing, search engine optimization and social media marketing/blogging come in, serving as magnets that draw customers to business.
There’s more to it, of course, and there’s definitely still a place for traditional marketing. Rest assured, we’ll be talking about it all again in future posts.
In the meantime, think about how you make your own buying decisions and how that fits in your company’s marketing strategy.
