Marketing is a Love-Hate Relationship:
- You Love when it’s working.
- You Hate the other 99% of the time.
So, What’s Wrong With Marketing?
It’s Interruptive
The vast majority of today’s marketing attempts to interrupt what you’re doing, appeal to your thinking and/or emotions, and persuade you to take action.
It’s Disconnected
Businesses like to focus on what their products and services do, while, on the other hand, target audiences are thinking in terms of their own wants and needs.
Two Ways About It
In the traditional marketing process, known as Outbound Marketing, messages are pushed out to audiences. Whereas Inbound Marketing applies a process in which audiences intentionally seek out information.
-
Outbound
Process
- 1. Buy Media
- 2. Interrupt
- 3. Persuade
- 4. Call to Action
-
Inbound
Process
- 1. Develop Content
- 2. Make It Findable
- 3. Be an Authority
- 4. Call to Action
Out With the Old and . . .
You can see the transformation happening. Examples of the types of information people want and need exist around us.
-
Outbound
Examples
- Print Ads, Banners
- TV Commercials
- Direct Mail, Email
- Telemarketing
-
Inbound
Examples
- Blogs
- You Tube Videos
- SEO
- Social Media
Where We’re Heading
A 2011 survey of 644 small and medium sized businesses’ marketing budgets includes two especially noteworthy takeaways:
- Budgets for Inbound Marketing are now at levels exceeding Outbound Marketing
- Small businesses are spending higher percentages on Inbound Marketing initiatives than medium sized.
This is particularly interesting for small businesses who seem to understand that Inbound Marketing initiatives such as social media, SEO and blogs are giving them a competitive advantage over larger companies.
