When we talk with most marketers today about how they generate leads and fill the top of their sales funnel, most say trade shows, seminar series, email blasts to purchased lists, internal cold calling, outsourced telemarketing, and advertising. We call these methods ”outbound marketing” where a marketer pushes his message out far and wide hoping that it resonates with that needle in the haystack.
Technology is making these techniques less effective and more expensive. Caller ID blocks cold calls, TiVo makes T.V. advertising less effective, spam filters block mass emails and tools like RSS are making print and display advertising less effective. It’s still possible to get a message out via these channels, but it costs more.
As we saw eight years ago when the first Internet bubble burst, financial pressure is now forcing companies to make changes. And just like last time, these changes are laying the foundation for a new, more efficient period of Internet growth.
In 2001, when the last downturn began, businesses began shifting some of their marketing budgets to search engine advertising. It was more measurable and targeted than display advertising, so it was appealing to marketers with tight budgets.
As we enter a second Internet downturn, businesses are again seeking efficiency. They’re shifting money out of expensive paid search advertising, and into optimization, content and social media that help them get found in organic search results.
These changes are laying the foundation for a new era of marketing on the web - the Inbound Marketing era.
What is inbound marketing? Inbound marketing is when the customers are calling you to make appointments, purchase products, or gain information. The reason that the use of inbound marketing is highly important in this day and age has to do with the do not call registry.
Inbound marketing was coined by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, co-founders of HubSpot, inbound marketing refers to permission-based marketing strategies in which consumers choose to learn more about you by conducting a keyword search online, subscribing to your RSS feed, downloading your white paper, opting into your email newsletter, watching your videos, listening to your podcasts, visiting your social network or commenting on your blog.
Inbound marketing is powered by content. In order to grow smarter and faster than the competition, organizations must continually publish great content online through blogs, podcasts, videos, optimized press releases, case studies, white papers, eBooks and by-lined articles.
Still Sri Lanka is not feeling the consequences of the world recession. May be because, the Sri Lankan economy is already suffering for last two decades for various reasons, and the companies here are more molded towards moving on in a challenging and unrealistic environment. Therefore, weather the world recession effect here or not, its time to conquer the foreign markets. Simply because, they’re in recession.
If companies here start to implement inbound marketing strategies now, and continue to add valuable contents specifically related to your niche market, in 6 months time your business starts to blow up. This will not only explore new markets, also strengthen the local market as well. Specially mingling with social medias will increase confident among the Generation y and also x.
The cost effectiveness is the major advantage that adds value to the company’s tight marketing budget. The first mover will definitely get the advantage of becoming a hub of your particular industry, because of rich contents. This hub will generate tones and tones of business from search engines, simply, site visitors becoming leads and then sales.
So, Welcome to the age of inbound marketing. The time is now to get started.
This article was sourced from Hub Spot, sapphire’s dawn, business knowledge source and PR 20/20