Dharmesh
Shah, co-founder and CSA of HubSpot, introduced the concept of Inbound Marketing
is to earn the attention of prospects and increase the chances customers can
get to contact with you. Blogs, SEO, social media, podcasts, video, eBooks, e-newsletters,
whitepapers and a bunch of new marketing methods are all considered inbound
marketing. Your email address should be there, contact number should be there.
And once they find you, HubSpot help you offering them perfect content to learn
about your business, allow your mechanisms engage in different level of contact
whichever makes them feel comfortable. In contrast, trade shows, seminar
series, direct mail, email blasts to purchased lists, internal cold calling,
outsourced telemarketing, and traditional advertising, are considered as Outbound
Marketing.
For those
IT associate industries, who rely on or find it optimizing to perform E-commerce
to do business, inbound marketing may bring huge opportunities to achieve market
share.
First, inbound
marketing lead customers to seek for information proactively, which made the
information more acceptable. While outbound marketing is always too naked pushing
products & services to customers, making customers uncomfortable. 44% of direct mail is never opened; 86% of people skip through television commercials; 84%
of 25 to 34 year olds have clicked out of a website because of an “irrelevant
or intrusive ad”. I still remember the aggressive marketing from CapitalOne which
drove me crazy. They kept sending me annoying letters twice a month and ask me to
open account with them. Not only do I feel a disclosure of personal information
at first, but also I feel CapitalOne is passing me useless
information without my permission, which is offensive.
Second, it
is easier to make money from fans or followers, who are already interested in
your products & services, than from other users. Let’s talk about online
marketing in social media like Twitter. If I saw a TV advertisement from L’Oreal
introducing their new amazing mascara, I probably won’t buy. Because there are
too many mascaras in the market and every brand is exaggerating the result using
their product. However, if I saw an L’Oreal mascara recommendation Tweet by one
of my friends or a fashion blogger I know. I am very possible to take a try. People
tend to believe words of mouth and other customer reviews more than before. The cost per lead in inbound marketing is less than
outbound marketing and more effective since it’s more targeted as well, given many
small businesses a chance to compete in the market.
Third,
they vision of inbound marketing integrated many single tools to present value proposition
to convince customers, what value added product & service they may receive,
and how they can be benefit from certain product. Inbound marketing more are
likely to be interesting, informative and creating a positive connection with consumers.
Communications are two ways, thus pull customers more likely to engage in your
brand and buy the product. As a result, personally I believe inbound marketing are
more influential to B2C companies, where business got to be strong social connected
and interacted.
However,
inbound marketing is not omnipotent, outbound marketing is not dead. It really
depends on the industry. For example, a local grocery store like Shaw’s, a
pizza house nearby, or a furniture store are still more looking for direct communication
with customers from outbound marketing. Bargaining power of your customers, bargaining
power of your partners, channels, size, and financial resources of your company…all
these matters. Sometimes it would be more ideal if company can create a model
with a mix of the two to reach out to more traffic and expand market share, which
many large companies using these days. We see P&G launching a bunch of new
product advertisements on TV all the year round, and they also arrange many
online PR events on many living information forum.
I think inbound marketing is also very important for B2B relationships. Having spent many years in R&D I have personally experienced this several times. If I dont already have a vendor for a certain material or equipment the first thing done is to do a quick internet search and see what comes up. I have used inbound marketing information to find vendors for unique materials, local test equipment maintenance, and new material vendors in low cost countries.
ReplyDeleteI never thought about this before, this is interesting. I used to think that inbound marketing would be more effective to B2C business, as I mentioned in the blog, since inbound is more social connected. It might be personal bias that I always think B2B are less emotional interacted.
DeleteIt is definitely less social and emotional but is definitely important in niche areas.
DeleteIt seems like everyone agrees with the statement that inbound marketing is great and can work well, but is not able to work solely for companies doing marketing. Even customers are more skeptical now, they still think they have heard the brand somewhere else is critical.
ReplyDelete