Is Inbound Marketing Taking Over?

Inbound Marketing

"Inbound marketing is a strategy that utilizes many forms of pull marketing – content marketing, blogs, events, SEO, social media and more – to create brand awareness and attract new business." 

Reasons Why Inbound Marketing is Hot today

Buyers and people today are more empowered then ever before, and it's apparent. The internet provides us with instant information and access to basically anything we want. We are now able to access things we were never able to before.

We also can’t forget about how big social media has become. It encourages us to share and compare, while mobile devices have a wherever/whenever acess to them. 

A great quote describing InBound Marketing by Inbound & SEO Marketing Consultant at InBound Authority, Joshua Gill, states: 

"Inbound Marketing is so powerful because you have the power to give the searcher/consumer exactly what answers they are looking for at the precise point that they need it. That builds trust, reputation, and authority in whatever niche you are practicing this form of marketing in.”

Because of this, traditional marketing tactics are becoming less and less effective.

The Time for Inbound Marketing is Now

To replace the tactics traditional marketing uses, companies are developing new methods geared at building awareness, developing relationships and generating leads. Inbound marketing attracts customers to you so you don't have to chase them down. It helps prospects find your company in the early stages of their decision-making process, leading to a stronger influence on their future buying decisions.

Why You Now Need Inbound Marketing to Survive

Inbound marketing offers numerous benefits. Here are some of the most important things I discovered it can do: 

• Generate social media shares and inbound links.
• Put customers in the driver’s seat.
• Help fuel search engine optimization efforts.
• Increase brand awareness.
• Enable customers to engage with your brand at their point of need, 24/7.
• Generate qualified leads for less money (when compared with traditional marketing).
• Shape a brand preference and influence future purchases.                                       

How To Get Started 

• Identify your target audience and learn all you can about them - You need to know what makes them tick 
• Determine your unique, compelling story - What should your audience be listening to?
• Choose your delivery platforms. Will you blog? Tweet? Use Facebook? Pinterest? Twitter? Facebook?
• Create and execute your content calendar.

Conclusion: How to Make Inbound Marketing Work for You

In our fast-paced society where the Internet and social networking shape a lot of our daily decisions, customers are exposed to more information than ever. This is not only making them more educated, but also is causing a change in buying behaviors.

Inbound marketing techniques need to be utilized in order to attract more leads and foster better brand preference. To be successful in inbound marketing, businesses need to introduce a disciplined approach to content creation, introduce new marketing tools that can help them score leads, and optimize how these leads flow through to sales. 

Traditional Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing

How They Differ

In contrast to traditional marketing, where marketers attempt to find customers, inbound marketing earns the attention of customers and makes the company easy to be found.

Traditional Marketing Strategies & The 4 P's 

Traditional marketing has always been defined by the 4P’s–Product, Promotion, Price and Place. Traditional marketing techniques typically focus on identifying the right audience segment, understanding their behavior and providing the proper incentive to get them to buy a product or service. In addition, there is the location or channel consideration. Learn more about it here. 

Advantages of Traditional Marketing

Identifying and understanding your target audience is still the key to marketing success. Many traditional marketing techniques remain appropriate. Audience segmentation is one example. Marketers can identify ways to provide a relevant and meaningful customer experience by creating segments for a number of components like:

• audience composition
• buying behavior
• geography
• events

The first step is to know your customer so that you can tailor relevant messages, offers and content to them, taking into consideration the media preference of your audience throughout an entire lifecycle.

With defined audience segmentation and on target offers, traditional marketing is still very effective when acquiring some customer segments. Traditional marketing strategies offer an effective way to deliver content to current and prospective customers, and can become a catalyst to drive your web site along other traffic marketing assets. This traditional marketing approach is often referred to as “push” marketing.

Delivering the right message through the proper channel is more important than ever. Traditional marketing strategies still work as they expand to incorporate more options.

Strategic Marketing Solutions – They Can Help

Here’s how Strategic Marketing Solutions can help with your traditional marketing strategies:

• Identify your target audience.
• Creating relevant content that will optimized the customer experience.
• Select channels for delivery including Email and/or Direct Mail.
• Develop a variety of marketing materials for the selected channels
• Test messages and then measure results.

Over all, I think both traditional marketing and inbound marketing are successful tools. But with how times are changing and our technological world is evolvong, there is no doubt inbound marketing will soon be the top marketing strategy. 

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