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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Attract, engage, and delight customers online
Inbound Marketing, Revised and Updated: Attract, Engage, and Delight Customers Online is a comprehensive guide to increasing online visibility and engagement. Written by top marketing and startup bloggers, the book contains the latest information about customer behavior and preferred digital experiences. From the latest insights on lead nurturing and visual marketing to advice on producing remarkable content by building tools, readers will gain the information they need to transform their marketing online.
With outbound marketing methods becoming less effective, the time to embrace inbound marketing is now. Cold calling, e-mail blasts, and direct mail are turning consumers off to an ever-greater extent, so consumers are increasingly doing research online to choose companies and products that meet their needs. Inbound Marketing recognizes these behavioral changes as opportunities, and explains how marketers can make the most of this shift online. This not only addresses turning strangers into website visitors, but explains how best to convert those visitors to leads, and to nurture those leads to the point of becoming delighted customers.
Gain the insight that can increase marketing value with topics like:
- Inbound marketing – strategy, reputation, and tracking progress
- Visibility – getting found, and why content matters
- Converting customers – turning prospects into leads and leads into customers
- Better decisions – picking people, agencies, and campaigns
The book also contains essential tools and resources that help build an effective marketing strategy, and tips for organizations of all sizes looking to build a reputation. When consumer behaviors change, marketing must change with them. The fully revised and updated edition of Inbound Marketing is a complete guide to attracting, engaging, and delighting customers online.
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Seitenzahl: 284
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
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CONTENTS
Cover
Praise for Inbound Marketing
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Inbound Marketing
Chapter 1: Shopping Has Changed . . . Has Your Marketing?
Who Moved My Customers?
Inbound in Action: Barack Obama for President
To Do
Chapter 2: Is Your Website a Marketing Hub?
Megaphone versus Hub
It's Not What You Say—It's What Others Say About You
Does Your Website Have a Pulse?
Your Mother's Impressed, But…
Tracking Your Progress
Inbound in Action: 37Signals
To Do
Chapter 3: Are You Worthy?
Creating a Remarkable Strategy
Tracking Your Progress
Inbound in Action: The Grateful Dead
To Do
Part II: Get Found by Prospects
Chapter 4: Create Remarkable Content
Building a Content Machine
Variety Is the Spice of Life
You Gotta Give to Get
Moving Beyond the Width of Your Wallet
Tracking Your Progress
Inbound in Action: Wikipedia
To Do
Chapter 5: Get Found in the Blogosphere
Getting Your Blog Started Right
Authoring Effective Articles
Help Google Help You
Making Your Articles Infectious
Give Your Articles a Push
Starting Conversations with Comments
Why Blogs Sometimes Fail
The Gift That Keeps on Giving
Consuming Content with RSS
Subscribe to Relevant Industry Blogs
Contribute to the Conversation
Tracking Your Progress
Inbound in Action: Whole Foods
To Do
Chapter 6: Get Found in Google
Paid versus Free
A (Brief) Introduction to How Google Works
Picking the Perfect Keywords
On-Page SEO: Doing the Easy Stuff First
Off-Page SEO: The Power of Inbound Links
Black Hat SEO: How to Get Your Site Banned by Google
The Dangers of PPC
Tracking Your Progress
Inbound in Action: LinkedIn “Elite”
To Do
Chapter 7: Get Found in Social Media
Creating an Effective Online Profile
Getting Fans on Facebook
Creating Connections on LinkedIn
Gathering Followers on Twitter
Gaining Reach from Google+
Being Discovered with StumbleUpon
Getting Found on YouTube
Tracking Your Progress
Inbound in Action: FreshBooks
To Do
Chapter 8: Visual Content
SlideShare
Visual.ly
Snapchat
Vine
Chapter 9: Software and Tools as Content
Writing Code Instead of Text
Replace Humans with Machines
Provide a Next Step
Kill Bad Tools Quickly
Tools Don't Market Themselves
Inbound in Action: Wealthfront
To Do
Part III: Converting Customers
Chapter 10: Convert Visitors into Leads
Compelling Calls-to-Action
Mistakes to Avoid
Optimizing Through Experimentation
Tracking Your Progress
Inbound in Action: Google
To Do
Chapter 11: Convert Prospects into Leads
Landing Page Best Practices
Creating Functional Forms
Going Beyond the Form
A Word of Caution
Tracking Your Progress
Inbound in Action: Zappos
To Do
Chapter 12: Convert Leads to Customers
Grading and Scoring Your Leads
Nurturing Your Leads
Broadening Your Reach
Tracking Your Progress
Inbound in Action: Kiva
To Do
Part IV: Make Better Decisions
Chapter 13: Make Better Marketing Decisions
Levels and Definitions
Campaign Yield
Tracking Your Progress
To Do
Chapter 14: Picking and Measuring Your People
Hire Digital Citizens
Hire for Analytical Chops
Hire for Their Web Reach
Hire Content Creators
Developing Existing Marketers
Tracking Your Progress
Inbound in Action: Jack Welch and GE
To Do
Chapter 15: Picking and Measuring a PR Agency
Picking a PR Agency
Tracking Your Progress
Inbound in Action: Solis, Weber, Defren & Roetzer
To Do
Chapter 16: Watching Your Competition
Tools to Keep Tabs on Competitors
Tracking Your Progress
Inbound in Action: TechTarget
To Do
Chapter 17: On Commitment, Patience, and Learning
Tracking Your Progress
Inbound in Action: Tom Brady
To Do
Chapter 18: Why Now?
Tools and Resources
Inbound.org
Advanced Google Search
Tracking with Site Alerts
BONUS: Entrepreneur′s Guide to Startup Marketing
Startup Marketing Checklist
18 Simple Tips for Naming a New Company
Insider Tips on Buying the Domain Name You Love
Get Inbound Certified!
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Table 2.1
Table 14.1
Table 14.2
List of Illustrations
Figure 2.1
Figure 5.1
Figure 5.2
Figure 5.3
Figure 5.4
Figure 5.5
Figure 5.6
Figure 6.1
Figure 6.2
Figure 6.3
Figure 6.4
Figure 7.1
Figure 7.2
Figure 7.3
Figure 7.4
Figure 7.5
Figure 7.6
Figure 10.1
Figure 10.2
Figure 11.1
Figure 11.2
Figure 11.3
Figure 11.4
Figure 11.5
Figure 11.6
Figure 11.7
Figure 12.1
Figure 12.2
Figure 12.3
Figure 12.4
Figure 13.1
Figure 13.2
Figure 14.1
Figure 15.1
Figure 16.1
Figure 16.2
Figure 16.3
Figure 16.4
Figure 16.5
Figure 18.1
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Foreword
Part 1
Chapter 1
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Praise for Inbound Marketing
“Halligan and Shah are on the frontlines of discovering and systemizing marketing methods that will be the standard soon enough. Jump the line and learn about inbound marketing today. This book is the beginning.”
—Chris BroganAuthor of The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth
“You don't need a degree from MIT to figure out inbound marketing. This book makes it simple and approachable.”
—Ed RobertsFounder and Chair,MIT Entrepreneurship Center
“As Inbound Marketing so eloquently explains, there's no black magic to successfully attracting customers via the web. Read this book, apply its lessons. It works.”
—Rand FishkinMoz
“If you've been looking for a trustworthy primer on getting found online, here's a great place to start. Buy one for your clueless colleague too.”
—Seth GodinAuthor of Meatball Sundae
“I wish I'd had a book like Inbound Marketing when I first started out online. This is the roadmap every small business needs for online marketing success today.”
—Anita CampbellEditor in Chief, SmallBizTrends.com
“If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing by reading this book.”
—Guy KawasakiCofounder of Alltop, and author of Reality Check
Inbound Marketing
Attract, Engage, and Delight Customers Online
Revised and Updated Second Edition
Brian Halligan
Dharmesh Shah
Cover image: © iStock.com/David Marchal/istockphoto
Cover design: Wiley
Copyright © 2014 by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom.
For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
ISBN 978-1-118-89665-5 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-89659-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-89670-9 (ebk)
Foreword
We're living a revolution!
We're living an ongoing revolution in the way people communicate. How did a relatively unknown, young, single-term black senator with funny ears and a funnier name get elected President of the United States, not once but twice? Simple: He and his team understood the revolution and harnessed the power of the web to communicate effectively with the masses. They built an online following of tens of millions and raised half a billion dollars, much of it from small donations on the web.
We're living a revolution in the way people find products and choose companies to do business with. These days, practically everyone turns to the web first when researching anything—from the best baby stroller to buy to which corporate accounting firm to hire for your business. We start at Google or another search engine and we tap our online network of friends, family members, and colleagues via online tools like e-mail, instant messaging, Skype, Facebook, and Twitter.
We're living a revolution where the companies that attract our attention are not the ones with big budgets and glitzy TV ads. Now we pay attention to the ones with great web content, like Quark Expeditions, a polar travel outfitter that uses content people find via search engine to fill expedition ships while the competition relies on expensive advertising and direct mail. When I wanted to travel to Antarctica, I found Quark Expeditions online and booked my journey.
Clearly, a great web presence is critical for any business. Inbound marketing is at the forefront of the revolution.
And with revolution comes liberation!
We're liberated from the tyranny of marketing effectiveness being determined by the size of our wallets. Today, anyone with a story to tell can command an audience—and customers—on the web. Your potential customers are looking for products and services like yours right now, today, this minute.
We're liberated from the tyranny of having to interrupt people's daily lives to try to market to them. Rather than grasping for buyers' attention with expensive ad campaigns, now we can publish engaging and useful information on the web and deliver it exactly when people are interested. People land on our virtual doorstep. This is a dream come true!
We're liberated from the tyranny of always relying on mainstream media to get our information into the marketplace. Now we can tell our story directly. And the best part is that when you tell the story well, you'll get found by people who are eager to do business with you.
Inbound marketing is about getting found online, through search engines and on social networking sites that billions of people use to find answers each day.
We've come a long way since the first edition of Inbound Marketing was released in 2009. You'll read about updated strategies for success in these pages. The tools of inbound marketing are constantly evolving, and new ways to communicate have been launched such as Instagram, Foursquare, and Google+. Consider these remarkable stats: In 2009, Twitter had 18 million users, and now it has 241 million; Facebook has grown during the same time from 150 million mostly student users to 1.3 billion people around the world. Mobile has exploded in importance with 6.8 billion mobile phone subscriptions on a planet of 7 billion people! It's never been easier to reach buyers on the web.
While the strategies of inbound marketing are similar to those in the first edition of this book, Brian and Dharmesh have completely updated the tactics for our new environment.
Oh, and one more thing that's gotten better in the past five years: Marketing is more fun than ever! When was the last time you got excited about buying yet another contact list of people you could interrupt? Never, right? Creating content and engaging with buyers on social networks is empowering. Inbound marketing is fun, and with it comes a more rewarding way to live.
But as in every revolution, the rules have changed. If you're like me and you've grown up with a traditional marketing education that focused on the “four P's,” then you've got to unlearn what you have learned. If you have an MBA, or you've trained on the job, then you've got to unlearn what you have learned. You need to forget what worked in the past, in the offline world, before the revolution. You need to pick up some new skills.
Fortunately, we've got Brian and Dharmesh to show us the way. These guys are marketing visionaries who have helped millions of people get found online. Really. Today, millions of people are being found more often than they used to be because of Brian and Dharmesh's incredibly popular tools and pioneering ideas, like HubSpot Website Grader. And now they've collected all their years of experience into this book.
In these pages, you'll find marketing strategy and wisdom. But even more important, you'll find hundreds of practical and accessible ideas, tools, and techniques that you can apply to your business right now. Inbound Marketing is written by experts steeped in the realities of successful marketing, not academics who talk up the latest theory.
The great thing about inbound marketing is that anyone can do it. Including you. Especially you. It doesn't require a lot of money, but it does require an investment of your time and creativity.
What are you waiting for?
Continue reading to join the revolution, become liberated, have fun, and get found by your customers!
—David Meerman ScottBest-selling author ofThe New Rules of Marketing & PRwww.WebInkNow.comtwitter.com/dmscott
Acknowledgments
We want to thank numerous people for their help on this book.
Thank you to David Meerman Scott, who pushed us to write the book in the first place and helped shepherd us through the process.
Thank you to the good folks at John Wiley & Sons for backing us and helping us create a great document, and thank you to Dianna Huff of DH Communications, Inc., for helping us with the final edits.
Thank you to the fantastic people at HubSpot who we have the privilege of working with every day.
Thank you to those who inspired and helped us:
David Meerman Scott (
webinknow.com
)
Seth Godin (
sethgodin.typepad.com
)
Kirsten Waerstad (
CreativeEarth.com
)
Paul Gillin (
paulgillin.com
)
Chris Brogan (
chrisbrogan.com
)
Gail Goodman (
constantcontact.com
)
Jack Welch (
welchway.com
)
Ray Ozzie (
www.microsoft.com
)
Tom Friedman (
thomaslfriedman.com
)
Guy Kawasaki (
blog.guykawasaki.com
)
W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne (
blueoceanstrategy.com
)
Larry Weber (
w2groupinc.com
)
Jim Cash (
www.generalcatalyst.com
)
Greg Strakosch (
TechTarget.com
)
Steve Jobs (
www.apple.com
)
Rand Fishkin (
Moz.com
)
Michael McDerment (
FreshBooks.com
)
Jason Fried (
37signals.com
)
Brian Solis (
briansolis.com
)
Paul Roetzer (
www.pr2020.com
)
Todd Defren (
pr-squared.com
)
Geoffrey Moore (
geoffmoore.blogs.com
)
Tim O'Reilly (
oreilly.com
)
John Battelle (
battellemedia.com
)
Charlene Li (
http://www.charleneli.com/blog
)
Josh Bernoff (
blogs.forrester.com/groundswell
)
Clayton Christensen (
www.hbs.edu
)
Joe Lassiter (
www.hbs.edu
)
Thomas Steenburgh (
www.hbs.edu
)
Andrew McAfee (
www.mit.edu
)
Arnoldo Hax (
www.mit.edu
)
Duncan Simester (
www.mit.edu
)
Ed Roberts (
www.mit.edu
)
Michael Cusumano (
www.mit.edu
)
Brian Clark (
CopyBlogger.com
)
John Jantsch (
DuctTapeMarketing.com
)
Avinash Kaushik (
Kaushik.net
)
Steve Krug (
sensible.com
)
Darren Rowse (
ProBlogger.net
)
Steve Rubel (
MicroPersuasion.com
)
Aaron Wall (
SEOBook.com
)
Andy Beal (
MarketingPilgrim.com
)
Introduction
Raise your hand if you know a business that would like more visitors to its website, more leads for its sales team—and more customers to fuel growth. Chances are your hand is up. We all know businesses that want to grow. There are millions of them. Since you're reading this book, chances are, your business is one of them.
Now, raise your hand if you love getting cold calls from eager salespeople during dinner. Or spam e-mails with irrelevant offers in your inbox. How about popup ads when you're trying to read an article on the Internet? No hands up? Didn't think so. And, as it turns out, most other people share your sentiment.
The problem is that there's a fundamental mismatch between how organizations are marketing and selling their offerings—and the way that people actually want to shop and buy. We all want to help our organizations grow, but nobody (including marketers) likes the way we are commonly marketed to.
The Story Behind a Startlingly Simple Observation
In 2004 (a decade ago!), the two of us met while we were both graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
After graduation, Brian was helping venture-backed startups with their marketing and sales strategies, when he noticed a problem. The “best practices” marketing and sales playbook he had successfully used for years at previous companies wasn't working that well. Not only were the practices far from the “best,” they were fundamentally broken. Trade shows, e-mail blasts, and advertisements just weren't that effective anymore. People weren't responding to these interruptive tactics and had gotten really good at blocking them out.
Madison Avenue, We Have a Problem
Meanwhile, Dharmesh was still at MIT, working on his graduate thesis. Between classes, he started a blog on startups and entrepreneurship. He creatively named it OnStartups.com. The blog gained mass adoption—and massive traffic, which surprised us both.
The two of us would meet regularly to talk about Brian's work, Dharmesh's classes—and startups. One topic especially interested us: Why was a tiny blog written by an MIT grad student with no budget able to get so much more traffic and interest than companies with professional marketing teams and big budgets? What was going on here? What was Dharmesh doing? Rather than interrupt people with advertisements or e-mails, Dharmesh was figuring out ways to pull in people from Google, other blogs, and social media sites. All for free. With many late nights and experimentation, he figured out how to “get found” by thousands of people on the web.
After many meetings, much coffee, and the occasional wine or Belgian beer (a favorite for both of us), we came to a startlingly simple observation.
People did not want to be interrupted by marketers or harassed by salespeople. They wanted to be helped.
The world has changed dramatically: People no longer live, work, shop, and buy as they did a decade or two ago. And yet, businesses still try to market and sell like it's the 1990s.
Inbound: A More Effective Way to Attract, Engage, and Delight
Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
—Victor Hugo
We started talking about this transformation in how people shop and buy. We called the traditional, interruptive methods “outbound marketing,” because they were fundamentally about pushing a message out, and started calling the new way “inbound marketing.” Inbound was about pulling people in by sharing relevant information, creating useful content, and generally being helpful.
So, we talked about this transformation to anyone who would listen—one-on-one meetings with local businesses in Boston, onstage at conferences with hundreds of people, and on our blog with thousands of readers. The response was overwhelmingly positive and incredibly exciting.
Inbound Was an Idea Whose Time Had Come
It is a fantastic time to be a marketer or an entrepreneur today. For the last 50 years, companies such as Procter & Gamble, IBM, and Coca-Cola used huge amounts of money to interrupt their way into businesses and consumers' wallets using outbound marketing techniques. The outbound marketing era is over. The next 50 years will be the era of inbound marketing.
Getting Businesses Off the Sidelines and Into the Game
The next question was, if the concept of inbound was so easy to understand and inspiring, why weren't more companies doing it? Why were millions of companies sitting on the sidelines instead of tapping into the power of this transformation?
The reason was clear: Though the idea of inbound made sense, people weren't completely sure how to get started and how to make it work for their business.
The problem wasn't a lack of tools. There were content management systems and SEO tools and social media applications and e-mail tools and marketing automation tools and on…and on…and on. Many of these individual tools were great—but the task of combining them was gargantuan. It wasn't within the realm of mere mortals who didn't command an impressive army of IT folks.
So, on June 9, 2006 (MIT commencement day), we officially started HubSpot—a software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We started the company for two reasons. First, we believed in the transformative power of inbound marketing and how it could help businesses grow. Second, we wanted to make it easy for organizations to get into the game so we committed to building a platform from the ground up that was expressly designed to help them do it.
We built HubSpot with one simple goal: Make it easier to get going with inbound, so businesses could get growing. One platform to learn. One password to remember. One bill to pay. And, one phone number to call. One integrated system, designed from the ground up to transform how organizations market and sell.
Inbound Helped HubSpot Grow Spectacularly
We took all our ideas about how to market in this new way, and tried them at HubSpot. We started a blog, we produced videos, we did webinars, we wrote eBooks—we even started HubSpot Academy, which trains and certifies people on inbound marketing. Over 100,000 certifications have now been completed.
HubSpot now employs over 800 people and has 12,000 customers in over 70 countries across the globe. We attribute much of our success to inbound marketing, both applying it to our business and helping our customers apply it to theirs.
You Hold Our Secrets in Your Hands…
What you are now holding in your hands is the collective learnings we have had. The concepts of inbound marketing that we've learned and applied to HubSpot, and insights from thousands of companies that have seen the power of this new model work in their own companies.
Eight years ago, when we started HubSpot in a tiny one-room office a block away from the MIT campus, we thought we were starting a software company. We were wrong. We had not just started a software company, we had sparked an entire movement. The inbound movement now extends well beyond our four walls—it touches and transforms millions of individuals from all over the world.
We believe we're still in the early stages of the inbound movement, and the best is yet to come.
Thanks for joining us on this journey.
Brian Halligan (@bhalligan)Dharmesh Shah (@dharmesh)
Part IInbound Marketing
What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.
—Mark Twain
Chapter 1Shopping Has Changed . . . Has Your Marketing?
The fundamental task of marketers is to spread the word about their products and services in order to get people to buy them. To accomplish this task, marketers use a combination of outbound techniques including e-mail blasts, telemarketing, direct mail, TV, radio, and print advertising, and trade shows (or expos) in order to reach their potential buyers. The problem with these traditional marketing techniques is that they have become less effective at spreading the word as people get better at blocking out these interruptions.
Twenty years ago, buying a large e-mail list of “targeted names” and sending newsletters and offers to addresses on this list worked well. Internet users now routinely employ spam filters, and the National Canned Spam Act limits a marketer's ability to send “unsolicited messages” to people with whom the company does not have a relationship. According to the research firm MarketingSherpa, the average open rate for an e-mail blast has gone down from 39 percent in 2004 to less than 25 percent in 2014.
Twenty years ago, hiring your own internal sales force or contracting with an external telemarketing firm worked well. Then, Caller ID became a standard feature on home, work, and cell phones, and increasing numbers of people are signing up for the national Do Not Call Registry. A well-trained telesales rep can go a full day without having a decent conversation with a prospect.
Twenty years ago, sending a piece of direct mail to a large list of people was an effective way to get business because people often opened their mail. Today, mailboxes are full of junk mixed in with a few bills, so people pay less attention to them. Other than my grandmother, I don't know anyone who actually looks forward to sifting through their mail.
Twenty years ago, spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on a TV advertisement was a guaranteed way to reach a large audience. More recently, people use TiVo/DVRs to skip advertisements. Further, the explosion of available TV channels and the rise of great video content online makes it difficult for advertisers to capture attention. Some of today's most popular shows (like Netflix's House of Cards) are free of advertising. This is not a small trend.
Twenty years ago, radio ads were heard by people in their cars, homes, and workplaces. Today, the emergence of XM/Sirius radio and music services like Pandora and Spotify has dramatically lowered advertising's reach, and the emergence of the iPod and iTunes has dramatically lowered the amount of radio people listen to at home and at work.
Twenty years ago, a trade show or conference was a surefire way for businesses to reach their target audience. Today, many trade shows have either gone out of business or have seen a significant decline. Only the very best and biggest events are able to draw significant attendees because people prefer to not spend money on flights, hotel costs, and so on. Many people visiting trade shows now are job seekers and other vendors—not buyers.
Twenty years ago, the trade publication was subscribed to and carefully read by most of your marketplace. Today, many trade publications have been losing subscribers and laying off staff. These highly qualified people are now starting their own blogs—some of which have become more popular than the publication they used to work for.
The bottom line is that people are sick and tired of being interrupted with traditional outbound marketing messages and have become quite adept at blocking marketers out.
Who Moved My Customers?
People shop and learn in a whole new way compared to just a few years ago, so marketers need to adapt or risk extinction. People now use the Internet to shop and gather information, but where on the Internet do they go—and how do they use the Internet for these activities? We can break the Internet down into three main areas.
People primarily shop and gather information through search engines, such as Google. The average information seeker conducts dozens of searches per day—and, rather than listen to a sales rep, read a spam message, watch a TV ad, or fly to a trade show, most people find it easier to sit at their desks and find the information online through Google. In order to take advantage of this new reality, marketers need to change the way they think about marketing—from the ground up.
Another place people gather information is the blogosphere and its more than 150 million blogs (as of this writing). Virtually every industry and consumer niche you can think of has a cadre of online pontificators, many of whom are quite good. Your target audience is no longer reading the trade publication, and instead is searching Google and subscribing to blogs written by the folks who used to write for the trade journal.
The third place people learn/shop is social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, and others.
To be successful and grow your organization, you need to match the way you market your products to the way your prospects learn about and shop for your products. And you do that by generating leads through inbound marketing.
Inbound in Action: Barack Obama for President
Regardless of your political views, you can apply the marketing principles Barack Obama used in his 2008 presidential campaign—a brilliant example of how to effectively use inbound marketing to beat bigger, better-funded rivals.
In the run up to the first campaign, Barack Obama was a little-known first-term senator from Illinois up against a well-known, well-funded Hillary Clinton political machine. Early in the race, Obama realized that using the same outbound marketing rules that Hillary would likely use would put him on the same playing field—but the field would be tilted her way.
Because he initially had less funding, Obama couldn't compete with Hillary and her e-mail blasts, telemarketing, direct mail campaigns, and TV and radio advertising. Instead of playing by the old rules, he made different rules altogether—many of which relied heavily on inbound marketing. “The aim of our online campaign,” says Chris Hughes, cofounder of Facebook and Obama's Internet strategist, “was to help individuals understand the values of Barack Obama and of our campaign and then to make it as easy as possible for them to actively engage with the campaign's work. We tried to open as many direct channels of communication as possible—using e-mail, text messages, online networks—and then equip them with the tools to spread the campaign's message using networking technology such as My.BarackObama.com and Facebook.”
The strategy worked. Americans were able to connect with Obama via his blog, Facebook page (5,800,000 supporters and counting), Twitter (450,000 followers and counting), LinkedIn (13,000 members and counting), and YouTube (21 million views and counting), among other social networks and websites. The rest, as they say, is history.
Eric Frenchman, John McCain's online consultant and Chief Internet Strategist for the online political agency Connell Donatelli, Inc., commented on the candidates' use of social media throughout the presidential campaign. (His comments were compiled by Jon Clements, who writes the PR Media Blog, which can be found at http://pr-media-blog.co.uk.) Keynoting the Future of Digital Marketing event in London in June 2009, Frenchman called search marketing “the great equalizer” and the “one place where you can compete or even beat your competition with less money.” He also noted Obama's ability to use Facebook effectively: creating “register to vote” widgets helped him amass over 3 million Facebook followers versus McCain's 610,000. Frenchman also made a point that to us is a key to using social media
