How Inbound Marketing Can Grow Your Businesses

I often notice a good deal of my clients don’t understand the difference between “advertising” and “marketing.” Most of them just follow what others are doing by advertising their business in the same places as their competition, using outbound marketing - newspapers, TV, radio and magazines as means to find customers.

What businesses really need to understand is that when you only advertise your business – rather than advertise and effectively market to them – you’re not connecting with your customer. Traditional outbound marketing techniques are losing their effectiveness as the internet continues to evolve. Rather than relying on outbound marketing to the masses that people find annoying (think of the radio ads that repeat their phone number 3+ times!) or don’t use anymore (newspapers are a perfect example), turn to inbound marketing to draw your target audience in to your business.

What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is a mixture of blogging, social media and SEO that pull potential users in to your information. When used correctly they can strengthen brands, assemble a community of users and put a product, service or company right in front of potential customers when they are looking to buy.

Today’s consumer hits the Internet searching for information on the product or service they want. Inbound marketing will put your business in front of the customer at the moment they are looking for your type of products/services. This happens at a local level too; don’t think your local market is not searching Google for your type of products or services, because they are.

How inbound marketing works
In the first step in SEO, we do research on your product/service type online. Among other things, we look at what your competitor is doing and what keywords they are using. This gives us a fair idea of how to connect with your perfect customer.

We then promote your blog and product/services for your company; that will help you figure in the top search engine rankings. Customers can find you via those items that you are writing about in your blogs. Think of your blog as an additional means of advertising your product/service. A recent study by Hubspot concluded that company blogs had 55% more visitors and 97% more inbound links. With statistics like this, it's easy to see why blogging is becoming a mainstream practice for businesses.

Social media is a crucial element in any inbound marketing solution. By social media, I mean using social networking sites and tools like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Youtube, Webinars, social bookmarking, etc. Utilizing these will help you connect directly with users and customers. These tools can be monitored regularly, looking for conversations people are having about your type of products and services.

Inbound marketing is much more then getting to the top of any search engine. It’s time to start thinking how you will market your business, not just advertise it. With good inbound marketing, you will find more ideal customers calling, with less effort on your part.