Chapter 1

What Is Inbound Marketing, Anyway?

In This Chapter

Viewing inbound marketing as a philosophy and a system

Understanding inbound marketing's contribution to success

Attracting and converting customers

Connecting on multiple levels with inbound marketing

Knowing the three-step inbound marketing process

Welcome to the world of inbound marketing. If you're a marketer who believes in authenticity, thrives on achieving goals, and embraces measurable success, you're in the right place. Inbound marketing is more than just marketing; it's a business practice. The inbound philosophy can create meaningful change in organizations large and small. Many times, this business evolution transcends financial metrics, affecting the very culture of an organization. The resulting productivity and achievement often surprises even top leadership. The metamorphosis from traditional marketing to inbound marketing attracts better customers and better employees. The outcome is usually expressed as higher revenues and profits. Inbound marketing has improved the businesses of my clients and of my own two marketing firms. I trust that by instituting an inbound philosophy within your organization you'll realize positive change, too. Just remember, inbound is not something you do, it's something you live.

Knowing the Basics of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is both a science and an art. Inbound marketing involves the science of measuring connections and making data-driven decisions, and the art of dissecting, analyzing, applying, and testing initiatives that connect in a meaningful way. Specifically, inbound marketing measures:

• Connections between companies and customers
• Connections between sales and marketing
• Connections between marketing investments and meaningful, measured financial results defined in terms of return-on-investment (ROI)

Inbound marketing causes actions and reactions. At its most basic level, inbound marketing consists of:

• Attracting visitors to your website
• Nurturing those visitors, on their terms, within a structurally planned dynamic environment (your website) that facilitates action
• Converting those visitors into leads and, in turn, leads into customers through mutual exchange of valuable data (content for customer data) via a systematic process
• Reconverting prior customers into loyal, lifelong customers

Some other assumptions under the inbound marketing philosophy:

• Consumers engage with companies on their own terms and on their personal timeline.
• Information empowers consumers to make smarter shopping and purchase decisions.
• Online authenticity is rewarded with high customer satisfaction and positive online consumer reviews.
• Openly sharing information and content creates trust.
• Content connects products with people, the marketing department with the sales department, and marketing initiatives with measurable business results.
• Data-driven decisions increase the odds of success.
• Measuring what matters improves performance.
• Customers' needs dictate product features and service offerings.
• Marketing automation facilitates efficient business practices.
• Relationships between brands and consumers are possible in the digital world.

Understanding Inbound as a Philosophy and as a Marketing System

You've heard plenty of buzz about it. You're pretty sure you should be doing it. But what - exactly - is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is a holistic, fully integrated approach to building your business via the Internet, based on the law of attraction - the belief that like attracts like. Inbound marketing is also both a business philosophy and a business practice.

Inbound as a philosophy

Philosophically, the term "inbound" goes beyond the marketing function, though the scope of this book is limited to marketing strategy and initiatives. Inbound as a business philosophy, and specifically as a marketing philosophy, refers to a complex customer-centric business model.

In particular, inbound marketing is a paradigm shift from the belief and practice of interruptive "push" marketing methods to a philosophy of attractive "pull" marketing. Inbound marketing isn't solely about great creative campaigns, beautiful graphic design, or logos. Although these things may represent characteristics of inbound marketing, a truly attractive inbound marketing campaign dives deeper than sleek advertising whose main intention is to seek attention.

Does your organization believe in the inbound philosophy? Here are some traits of the inbound methodology:

• Your company innovates based on satisfying unfulfilled consumer needs.
• Your customer relationship extends beyond the transactional.
• Your company connects with customers at multiple levels at multiple points in time.
• Your focus is beyond making the first sale, extending to creating a customer for life.
• You encourage customer interaction, listen to feedback, and respond accordingly.

Is your company ready for inbound?

Answer these questions to determine whether your company is ready to try inbound marketing:

• Does your company actively interact with prospective customers before the first purchase?
• Does your company interact with its customers with non-sales messaging before the first purchase?
• Does your company know the lifetime value of its customers, expressed in terms of dollars and influence?
• Does your company use content to create meaningful connections before, during, and after a sale?
• Does your company know its customers beyond the first purchase?
• Does your company create consumer value beyond a transaction?
• Is your public messaging customer-centric or product-centric?
• Is your private internal messaging customer-centric or product-centric?
• Does your company solve customer problems?
• Do you communicate with prospects at both the emotional and rational level?

If you answered yes to most of these questions, your company is primed and ready to begin implementing inbound marketing.

The inbound philosophy thrives upon mutual trust, meaningful relationships, and two-way communication. Inbound marketing creates shared connections between consumer and company based on mutually beneficial connective points. The most successful companies create value beyond the product or service they're selling to enhance a consumer's lifestyle. Brands like Starbucks and Red Bull have a value that extends well beyond the customer's need for a beverage; they represent an aspirational lifestyle to which their customers connect on such a deep level they actually "live" the brand.

Inbound marketing as a system of attraction and conversion

In practice, inbound marketing is a connected system of online customer attraction and conversion. When a stranger becomes a lead, a lead becomes a customer, and that customer lives and advocates your brand . that is the flawless execution of inbound marketing. This powerful conversion process is why more and more organizations are practicing inbound marketing. Of companies that practice inbound marketing, 93 percent see an increase in lead generation.

Using this principle, inbound marketing specifically aims to attract those potential customers who have signaled or demonstrated an interest in what your organization has to offer. You have a valuable product or service consumers want or need - something they're searching for online. Inbound marketing speaks directly to that need by creating conversations that connect with prospective customers, then facilitating a positive conversion action. By the way, these conversions are not always measured by the items in the online shopping cart. Your desired conversion action may certainly be a purchase, but it also may be any derived action, including:

• Donations
• Reviews
• Shares or Likes on Facebook
• Retweets on Twitter
• Downloads
• Demos
• Free trials
• Webinars
• Newsletters

By offering value and facilitating connections, inbound marketing "pulls" in customers based on their specific expressed needs. This attractive "pull" method is a key approach that defines inbound marketing.

Simply put, the practice of inbound marketing can be defined as:

Learning Why Inbound Marketing Is Important to Your Organization

Massive change is occurring in the business ecosystem. This is true in the business-to-consumer and business-to-business sectors. Inbound marketing doesn't just address this change; it embraces it.

There is an unprecedented shift of power from the giant corporate conglomerate brands to individual consumers. Never in history has the individual consumer wielded so much power, currency, and influence. You and your brand have lost control. And that's okay .

Today, the individual consumer decides:

• What information to consume
• Where to consume information online
• When to consume information online
• When to engage with your...