In the past ten years, due to a dramatic increase in consumer technologies, VCR’s, busy signals and floppy disks have all been replaced with Tweeting, iPads and Wi-Fi. Thanks to the concentrated internet age we live in, the last three words have concrete meaning, even to those who do not utilize them. In turn, marketing companies have been slowly making the switch from time consuming, costly outbound marketing to effective, efficient inbound marketing. This has allowed small businesses to get found by the customers who need them.
Outbound marketing takes the stance of getting your message “out” to the general public, whoever they may be. This includes bombarding individuals with many different forms of advertising on a daily basis. Television commercials are being done away with because there are many companies who now offer commercial free options (for a fee) through the use of TiVo and watching TV on the internet. Radio commercials are infrequently effective as well because many people now pay for commercial free radio such as satellite radio or Pandora One. These paying customers are not being reached by companies utilizing outbound marketing.
Billboards may attract buyers attention for a split second, but because there are hundreds of billboards that people see on a daily basis (think about your commute to work this morning), their effects have decreased. Many people subscribe to online magazines these days, so magazine articles are being phased out as well. Yes, make up ads are placed in teen girl/fashion/gossip magazines, but do girls in that target audience actually purchase the advertised products? For years, this has been the way for businesses to do their marketing, but in this internet age it is time for a change.
Inbound marketing primarily allows your website to bring in current, present and future customers with the use of strategic website design, functionality and blogs. When you want to find out information about a specific topic, where is the first place you are going to go? Chances are it’s a search engine on the internet. Then you will read the first few links and hopefully gain the exact information you are looking for. Using this strategy, inbound marketing implies that companies should then improve their website, with the use of raw data, social media sites and blogging, to the point where they are one of the top links on that organic search.
Inbound marketing allows companies to get found by the people who are looking for their specific service. In order to increase the traffic of a website, a blog should be added. When a search engine is used to look up your business, all it sees are a bunch of words on a site. The more unique words you can add to the site, the more like that site will be found. Update this blog at least two times per week because you don’t want to give your website a bad first impression by having your last blog post be from six months ago.
While outbound marketing was an effective tool in the business world ten years ago, times have changed and more business is now being conducted online. Inbound marketing allows companies to take advantage of this economical entity since maintaining a website and blog is not only far less expensive than running a commercial in the super bowl, but it targets the exact consumers the company is looking for. With the great speed that technology is progressing at, with new upgrades and version available every time you turn around, it is about time that small businesses utilize the unlimited techniques that inbound marketing as to offer.
