What You Can’t Afford to Not Know About Inbound Marketing

25 Jun What You Can’t Afford to Not Know About Inbound Marketing

If you’re looking into search engine optimization in general or any specific SEO company, you’re sure to hear the term “inbound marketing” thrown around. If you’re not familiar with it, don’t worry; it was coined only relatively recently. But inbound marketing is an important concept, one that all businesses owners should know about — especially in today’s world of digital marketing.

The term was first coined about a decade ago by Brian Halligan of HubSpot, and refers to tactics that draw customers in, rather than going out and competing for a consumer’s attention (through cold calls, advertisements, etc., all of which are considered “outbound marketing”). It can be broken down into two components, both of which are largely accomplished through content marketing:

Making Your Website Easy to Find
A key component of inbound marketing is making your website easy for consumers to find. Since most consumers use search engines and 75% of those users will never scroll past the first page of results, that means it’s vital to work with an SEO company to boost your website’s organic rankings. A reputable SEO company will do this this through a combination of onsite optimization factors and content marketing (which we’ll talk more about in a minute). The good news is that leads that come from organic search have a 14.6% close rate, as opposed to the 1.7% average close rate for outbound marketing. You should note that although many companies also use paid search advertising to increase their site visibility, only organic SEO, and not ads on search engines, are considered to be part of inbound marketing.

Earning the Attention of Consumers
The other half of inbound marketing involves earning the attention of consumers, therefore drawing them to your website, by producing interesting content that they’ll want to read (or watch) and share even if they’re not necessarily in the market for the product or service you’re selling. It may sound counter-intuitive to create content when you know the majority of the people reading it won’t be interested in what you offer, but it actually works to set you up as an authority in your industry. Still skeptical? Research shows that content marketing costs about 62% less than traditional marketing while producing three times as many leads. And since content marketing also earns inbound links for your website (as the content is shared), it also drives SEO efforts. That’s about as close to a win-win as you can come in the give-and-take world of marketing.

Thoughts? Questions? Join the discussion in the comments.