It´s astonishing how many things are changing in this times. Personally, I think one of these changes is related with Marketing: Inbound Marketing . But, What is it? Why do it? Inbound Marketing is about attracting customer, but without using conventional tecniques, like television or radio ads.
So, How do you get to your consumer?. Well, in these day more and more people live on the internet, on facebook, on twitter. Taking advantage on internet to grow, a company start creating online blogs, videos, photos, that potential consumer want to see, to read.
Inbound marketing requires a set of abilities: First, the ability to write appealing content that may attract potential consumers. Second, the ability to put that content in a way that can be easily found, which require techniques for search tecnique optimization. Third, the ability the engage your customers to follow you, to interact with your content, to make them express themselves, to have a fruitful dialogue and to spread the message.
Inbound marketers believe that your own web page is the most important asset. I disagree with them, but I cannot deny the fact that is a useful and cheap tool for a company, especially a start-up one. If you are starting a company, probably you are not going to pay for a commercial on TV, but what you can really do is to create a compelling web page in order to lure customers.
Of course, one visitor does not mean that you are going to make a deal, or a sale. In fact, one of the most important aspect is to have this clear since the very beginning. The ratio of Visitors/Customers varies from 2000:1 to 5000: 1. So this is not an easy task, first you have to get found by your potential prospects and later convert those prospects into leads and costumers.
There are some companies who can help you with this task, one of those companies is Hubspot, which charges for small companies a upfront fee of US$500 and US$250 monthly. What is really remarkable about this company, is the fact they have never pay for any tv ad, they are stick to inbound marketing philosophy. They convince its own customer with the fact that inbound marketing work for them.
In this globalize marketplace, Inbound Marketing is undoubtedly a strategy that we cannot rule out.
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In addition to the set of abilities, I believe it’s important to take in consideration some other aspects of marketing over the internet. First, managers need to understand their company and industry. Keep in mind that 1) It will be hard to access distribution channels, 2) extra market share is likely to come at the expense of other companies – if mature market – so fighting will be necessary (for eg., likely to need additional marketing, or additional R&D to come up with much superior product at the same cost), 3) that more market shares means more sales means more investment in production and equipment and more marketing, and 4) there will be a high investment cost in IT to prepare for the new changes.
There are various factors that will make costs higher, at least initially. Most are the results of lack of knowledge on the new advertising economies, need for economies of scale in manufacturing, purchasing, selling.
Raw material costs are likely to decrease as volume increases.
Selling: Probably higher at first and then remaining stable because of two tendencies: a) costs are increasing, and b) The company is becoming better at it.
Overheads: Operating Expenses - rent, gas/electricity, wages etc are likely to increase.
Selling and General Administrative expenses: Perhaps slightly higher.
Investments in R&D: Likely to be higher as the company must prepare to have a more innovative product using the same equipment or acquiring new ones to reduce its price premium – product differentiation not affected by price sensitivity
Investment in Advertising: Will vary depending on the strategy assumed (full scale entry, versus region by region, versus niche) and share desired. It will increase in the early years and then will decrease on a per unit basis as a company starts to distribute more and achieve brand recognition - hard to view as variable cost in the early years as the volume will be very low.
Investment in production lines: Will vary with volume sold and it’s not entirely clear about costs of production. What is clear though is that production will increase with the new advertising venture.
Ok...marketing is important. Inbound marketing is a new power marketing tool proving to be effective in the Internet era. Outbound marketing, or traditional marketing, must not be neglected as well since that it has proved to be effective in the past and for sure it will keep on being effective in the future. But, despite the importance that nowaday is being given to the advertisement, more and more often focus on quality is wading at detriment of the cosumers.
Toyota is a representative example of this generalized shifting from quality to advertising of quality. I mean, companies are more and more focusing on how enhance the perception of the quality of their products among the consumers and less concerned about how improve their actual standards. The increasing costs for the companies of marketing and advertising could be an explanation to this shift. Maybe, we are assisting at a crowding out of resources from quality and quality management to marketing as the competition for new customers among companies increase.
Will this shift pay off? The evidences are showing that the momey companies save on quality are paid back on legal suits called by customers damaged by an inefficient product damaging the reputation of the companies themselves.
And if the reputation is damaged the is no in- or outbound marketing powerfull enough to restore it at the previous level.
I have to admit this is the first time I've ever heard about Inbound Marketing, but it seems like an honest and decent way to apply Marketing.
Let's face it, in several opportunities Marketing has earned a bad reputation. If one surfs the web, one can find several flashy advertisements that generally really don't stand for what they offer, causing distrust by the customers; at least I am one of them.
If the information posted in this blog is accurate, this is new and more human way to use marketing, not only to stimulate the consumption of goods, but to relate to clients as human beings, notion sometimes forgotten by organizations.
I don't think this approach can be used to all products, but in the cases that can be used, it will give the organizations and their customers a real added value.
Although many of us might think that the traditional way of "marketing" will always be the winner or the one with the significant impact, but it’s because we still lived some years before this digital revolution had so much influence. But if we think about all the 15-18 years old people, who were born in this time of revolution and got used to it. Their main source of information and trends are formed based on online info. maybe to us traditional marketing is important (for now). But for the next generation the traditional marketing might be irrelevant and useless. So I do agree with the inbound marketers.
Ola
I had never heard of the term Inbound Marketing until now. Out of curiosity, I navigated through the Hub Spot website and think the concept of Inbound Marketing is "right on" with where marketing efforts are headed. As stated in the website, traditional Outbound marketing efforts are becoming less effective due to the emergence of TIVO, satellite radio, caller ID,etc. Due to these advancements, consumers can completely tune out traditional marketing messages. Instead, consumers are increasingly spending more time on social networking websites - 6 hrs per month according to a Nielsen study - & therefore Inbound Marketing will play a larger role in attracting & retaining potential customers. Given this trend, companies should enhance their Inbound Marketing capabilities, in order to deliver future profitable sales growth. I was very impressed by Hub Spots service offerings and proven results - "Hub Spot customers get 4.2 times more leads after five months of using Hub Spot."
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