WHAT IS INBOUND MARKETING? Inbound marketing is not a tactic, channel, or technology. It’s a way to approach your marketing to capitalize on the way your customers make buying decisions today. People value personalized and relevant content, not intrusive messages. With inbound marketing, you can attract visitors, convert leads, close customers, and delight them into promoting your business to others without interrupting their lives. Inbound marketing is all about pulling prospects and customers in rather than pushing your message in front of them when they don’t want to see it. Through great content in your blog, downloadable content, social media, SEO, email, etc, you can attract your prospects to you when they need you and are looking for you, rather than interrupting them when they don’t want to see you.

WHY INBOUND MARKETING? Inbound marketing is generally much more targeted than outbound marketing. Instead of spending a large portion of your budget on reaching a large audience that may or may not have any interest in what you’re selling or what your business does, inbound looks at attracting those that have already indicated that they are interested in what you do. No more wasted efforts. No more wasted money. Rather than focusing on traditional outbound marketing techniques like radio, billboard, or television advertisements, inbound marketing focuses on aligning your content and message with your target market and getting that message in front of them at the right time and in the right way. Through social media marketing, blogs, content offers such as eBooks and white papers, email newsletters, SEO, and other forms of relevant content, inbound marketing vs outbound marketing pulls people toward your company and your products or services.

FROM THE FUNNEL TO THE FLYWHEEL

Times are changing. We have all grown up with the idea of a funnel. You add prospects in the top and customers come out the bottom. Well, there has been a massive power shift in the way sales happen today. We, as sales people and businesses, no longer have the power. We are no longer in control. More and more prospects are doing their own research and finding the answers they need on their own. They don't need sales people like they did even 5-10 years ago. That's why the concept of the funnel has to change. Introducing the flywheel.

The flywheel puts the customer at the center of everything we do and the faster we get it to spin, the better our marketing, sales, and service engines are running. See, there should never be an end to a customer journey. With the funnel, once you closed the business, they were out of the funnel. They, in some cases, were forgotten. With the flywheel, they never leave. They're always being put first and always being touched. Regardless of your business, industry, or who you sell to, it's time to adopt the flywheel and put the customer at the center of everything you do.

IS INBOUND RIGHT FOR MY BUSINESS? Inbound marketing is a method in which you help people that are already looking for your products or services, find you. This is done through a variety of tactics including social media marketing, blogging, website optimization, landing pages, SEO, and more. It is about providing value to your visitors, leads, and customers in order to attract, convert, close, and delight them. Inbound, however, is not an immediate solution. It is structured to grow your website visitors, collect information from them, and provide value in order to move them through the buyer's journey. It can be integrated with quick movement options such as pay-per-click (PPC) if needed. In short, inbound marketing is a long-term solution to a fuller pipeline, a more qualified pipeline, and more customers at a lower customer acquisition cost.