What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is about creating valuable experiences that have a positive impact on people and your business. How do you do that? You attract prospects and customers to your website and blog through relevant and helpful content. Once they arrive, you engage with them using conversational tools like email and chat and by promising continued value. And finally, you delight them by continuing to act as an empathetic advisor and expert.

Unlike outbound marketing, with inbound marketing, you don’t need to fight for your potential customers’ attention. By creating content designed to address the problems and needs of your ideal customers, you attract qualified prospects and build trust and credibility for your business. Source: https://www.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing

The Agile team has been approaching inbound marketing from a unique perspective. We've been practicing inbound marketing principles since 2010 however what was missing was an integrated, holistic approach. In 2017, through a workshop hosted by HubSpot the pieces began to fit together. These statistics were presented:

It became clear that prospects are more interested in getting answers to their questions than being bombarded with Ads, which are usually ignored anyway.

Question: Should we just do away with outbound marketing then? 

Answer: Certain types of outbound marketing should not be used such as forced selling and email spam. People have choices -- why alienate them? So, the answer is in most cases no. For B2B businesses, word-of-mouth is essential as well as certain forms of pay-per-click advertising (i.e., Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Instagram Ads, etc.). Perhaps this aspect of your business, word-of-mouth is going well. If not, we recommend talking with and visiting the experts at Asentiv, with offices throughout the U.S. and internationally to determine the best combination of membership marketing and outreach to potential referral partners. Asentiv helps with identifying who they are and how to reach them most effectively...and according to a regular schedule.  

Next Steps: We live and breathe this stuff. To schedule a brief call to receive some tips and answer any of your questions, schedule a call now with Sr. Director, Alan Koenigsberg. 

To learn more about Inbound Marketing, the free Inbound Marketing course offered by HubSpot and through the HubSpot Academy is your first and best starting point.