Inbound Marketing: Hitting the Broad Side of a Barn

As I sit here writing this post, while also half watching Mad Men on binge, I can’t help but notice how things have evolved from what the men of Madison Avenue did, and what I currently am setting out to do. And no, I’m not talk comparing his scotch-whiskey on the rocks, to my clearly superior whiskey sour. The two immediate things that strike me harder than watching 1960’s sexism, are inbound marketing opposed to outbound marketing, and the digital age of marketing vs. traditional forms of marketing. Now, I’m not sure if it’s because I’m born into the generation of lazy, immediate-gratification whiners, but the marketing and advertising done at Sterling Cooper just looks exhausting. Frankly, it’s all a shot in the dark, with the only evidence of it working being mild research, a gut-feeling, and a pack of Lucky Strikes. I’d rather sit here on my ass, and let the wonders of social media, Web 2.0, and SEO do my grunt work. And the terrific part is: my proof won’t go up in smoke (shots fired, Mr. Draper).

Whilst reading Havard Business School Hubspot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0, it was almost a fairy tale of how the two founders met and birthed Hubspot. A successful expert in the field of marketing and venture capital, partners with an award winning architect? Well, that just makes more sense than sriracha on eggs (don’t fucking mix that up with Tabasco, a rant for another occasion).

The article goes on to describe why Hubspot and it’s easy to use inbound marketing software was so beneficial. It basically came down to describing the differences between outbound and inbound.

Outbound marketing:

• marketing to the mass
• pull people away from their lives
• dickhead telemarketers, junk mail, obnoxious pop ads

Inbound marketing:

• collection of strategies and techniques that pull relevant prospects towards a business
• entice people to interact; intrigue them to draw them in
• creative content, videos, blogs — it’s information not being shoved down their throat, but rather just sitting nicely on a silver platter in front of them
• Creating a “funnel” to narrow potential buyers and transform them into customers.

So what might be an example of outbound? Essentially any commercial you see on tv in hopes someone watching will purchase the product or service. But inbound marketing is not dickslapping your across the face. Rather, it’s sneaky and uses content to lure you in and want to know more. Native advertising is an awesome example. Those “Life Hacks” blogs on Buzzfeed, where it goes on to say “a tube sock is more than just a foot glove! Use it to clean your window blinds, a beer and wine cozy for traveling, storage for loose items, or arts and crafts for the kids”. All brought to you by the people at Hanes.

And so I thought more about inbound, and wondered if was related to advertising. Turns out, they’re pretty closely related. From an integrated marketing communications perspective, you should make content that your customers will want to market for you. In other words, what shit do you share on your friends’ walls that you found on Reddit, Buzzfeed, and YouTube? What kind of stuff makes you want to tweet positively about a company? That’s the disguise of inbound marketing, in this example, viral marketing content.

Take GoPro for instance. They’re so good at not marketing because they don’t have to anymore. People buy their products, film and edit the videos, submit them, ask people to share it for views and GoPro selects the coolest/most popular videos to go on their YouTube channel, for millions of others to view and share. It’s content so enticing others want to see it, while advertising the product. The best part is; GoPro doesn’t lift a finger except to count the millions of dollars saved. It’s the same thing as when you brought home that A- on your spelling test and mom put it on the fridge. You did all the work, it just took someone a little taller to put it somewhere for everyone else to see. You see what they did there?

After diving into a skimming of Amplify Your Impact: How to Multiply the Effects of Your Inbound Marketing Program, it’s very clear marketers are evolving just trying to keep up with the speed their customers are moving at, Marketo defines inbound marketing as “The process of helping potential customers find your company – often before they are even looking to make a purchase – and then turning that early awareness into brand preference and, ultimately, into leads and revenue…inbound marketing is about creating interesting, informative, and even entertaining content and optimizing and distributing it across online channels so it can be found by – and hopefully engage – prospective buyers.” That sounds an awful lot like the Harvard article I just talked about, and my viral marketing correlation.

A big part of what drives the success of inbound marketing today is search engine optimization, or SEO, which is the “optimizing and increasing visibility of your site and content by including keywords that help you rank
high in organic search results… the higher your content and site ranks in a search engine’s results list, the more likely someone will find and click on the link to your content” because just like you, there’s millions of other people that don’t believe anything exists beyond the first page of that Google search you just performed. Everybody wants to be on the front page, and keywords is, well, the key.

So what does a business have to do to flourish? Well, it comes down to a short list of strategic actions;

1. Create and deliver high-quality content
2. Share your content and find the channels to spread word so people can find you
3. Figure out where to share the content so it hits the right target
4. Don’t necessarily make noise, but rather sound different to make yourself stand out

Inbound marketing should also get along with corporate marketing. You should want to continue to be engaging and searchable in the efforts of good press and branding. We see this all the time between competing brands. Like XBox and PlayStation. Customers are very much aware of each other’s competing brand and what they offer. Hell, even most of their games are the same. But it comes down to brand loyalty, and through that, customers will continue to purchase the next gen consoles and word-of-mouth will spread to their family and friends to influence purchasing decisions.

Creating leads actually related back to my previous blog post on first and last click. “You need to invest in the process of building relationships with qualified prospects, with the goal of earning their business when they are ready to buy.” The concept of marketing automation is extremely useful;

• Raises open and click rates
• Enables A/B testing beyond just landing pages on your website
• Creates new landing pages in minutes without IT: Marketing automation empowers you to create and launch relevant and optimized landing page whenever needed
• Shortens sales cycles
• Lets sales know when their prospects are engaging online
• Delivers sophisticated reporting and analytics
  • As marketers are increasingly held accountable for the impact of their activities, they need tools that help them assess – and increase – their effectiveness and impact on revenue
• Wins more deals and generates higher revenue per deal

The end of the article concluded with creating the proper campaign mix, which is tailored to your business objectives. Is this to boost brand awareness? Do you want to drive more traffic to your sites? Are you trying to thicken revenue streams?

Well, when you’re ready to get with the new era of marketing, here’s a check list to make sure your inbound marketing will be running efficiently;

• SEO – increase likelihood of being searched
• Blogging – engage customers through content and interest
• Social Media – increase brand and content awareness
• Forums – participation with customers for a sense of brand engagement
• White papers and books – help readers understand you better
• Videos – faster than white papers and books, usually is more fun

Happy hunting, and Go Hawks!