Inbound Marketing – Concept

For any marketing technique, the prime objective is finding prospective customers, converting them into sales and increasing the revenue of business. But, depending on the approach used, marketing can be classified as inbound and outbound marketing. Traditional marketing methods were part of outbound marketing, and with the integration of technology in marketing, these methods have become less effective. Inbound marketing has gained prominence over outbound marketing, especially for small and newly established businesses.

Inbound marketing involves creation of valuable content and promote the content to ‘get spotted’ by customers. It follows the approach of attracting or pulling prospective customers towards products rather going out and finding or pushing products to look for prospective customers. It is one of the best marketing approaches, especially for B2C, B2B and ecommerce businesses. It is permission based marketing, where businesses communicate to customers via mediums that customers have permitted. Unlike traditional marketing, it does not interrupt the customers, hence their effectiveness is higher. Over the past few years, there has been significant popularity of inbound marketing methods as it has been found to be very effective. Basically, inbound marketing is about creating and sharing content that earns attention of customers and create brand awareness.

Today, inbound marketing consists of different techniques including –

 1.  Blogs

 2.  Videos

 3.   Ebooks and whitepapers

 4.   RSS and feeds

 5.   Social media platforms

 6.   Forums

 7.  Organic Search (SEO)

 8.  Targeted emails

There are various benefits of inbound marketing over other marketing techniques. Benefits of inbound marketing include –

• Boosts business – By generating more leads, inbound marketing helps in boosting business.

• Cost effective - As the marketed is targeted, cost of acquisition by inbound marketing is low. Thus, it helps in making the most of the marketing budget.

• Brand building – Inbound marketing can be effectively used for brand building and promotion.

• Better targeting – As inbound marketing techniques are planned after analysis of customer behavior, it offers better targeting.

• Result-oriented – Inbound marketing techniques are highly measurable and result-oriented.

 Establish visibility, build customer base and gain credibility with inbound marketing techniques.