As a business owner, you recognize how important a solid marketing plan is to the bottom line of your business.
Get it wrong, and you could quickly find yourself out of business.
For this reason, forward thinking business owners are adding inbound marketing to their promotional efforts.
What Is Inbound Marketing
Instead of interrupting people with traditional mass-market techniques, inbound marketing attracts specifically the people who are most interested in what your business or organization is offering.
This is achieved by creating content that potential customers are looking for. Through these efforts, people will be attracted to what you have to offer instead of being pushed away as is often the case with outbound marketing.
To keep pace with the competition, every business with a web presence should be using the following inbound marketing techniques.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is often referred to as SEO, and involves optimizing your website so that it shows up as high as possible in the search results of search engines like Google and Bing whenever someone performs a search for a keyword related to your website.
When a person finds your website via a web search, you're not interrupting them, you're helping them find what they're looking for.
Pay Per Click Advertising
If you've ever used Google or Bing, no doubt you've seen the little ads on the top, bottom, and right side of the page. Businesses pay by the click to advertise there. They do this by bidding on specific keywords related to their site.
At first glance, you may think of this as a form of outbound interruption marketing, but it isn't. Because the ads only show on certain keywords, that means they will only be shown to people who are searching for what you have to offer.
Like with SEO above, you're helping them find what they're looking for, and that's a good thing.
Social Media
The explosion of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have really changed the way businesses interact with customers and potential customers.
With hundreds of millions of users on both platforms, there is no better way to acquire and retain a massive following of folks who want and appreciate what you have to offer.
And it does so in a way that is unobtrusive and that leaves the customer in complete control. If they no longer want to hear your message, they can leave any time.
Further, they only come to you in the first place because they liked what you had to offer.
That's what inbound marketing is all about...having customers come to you because they like what you're doing instead of you going after them.
Interruption marketing still has a role to play when it comes to promoting one's business, and you need look no further than our fascination with Super Bowl ads to see that.
But not everyone can afford the millions of dollars it requires to advertise during the Super Bowl, and the cost of other outbound marketing venues continues to rise as well, while returns from these channels continue to shrink.
It is for this reason that so many companies are turning to inbound marketing. Maybe it's time your company did too.