Digital Inbound Marketing Blog

The Basics of Inbound Marketing- What Small Businesses Need to Know

Posted by David C Aaronson

Aug 6, 2013 9:12:00 PM

inbound marketingInbound Marketing Since the Internet started becoming popular, marketing has continuously changed.

People expect more, and they are getting it. That’s one of the reasons inbound marketing is so popular.

Customers love it. For once they don’t have to call around, ask friends and family for opinions, or wait for a report from Consumer Reports.

Today they open the Internet, visit Google and get all of the information they need. Simple, easy, and they control the whole process, no waiting around.

Those Who Get Inbound Marketing

Big brands understand how much things have changed, and they’ve been using social media, blogging, and SEO for years. They ‘get’ what so many others just don’t. If you don’t give customers what they want, they’ll find a competitor that will.

The Definition of Inbound Marketing

Then what is this inbound marketing? And how can you start doing it?

Here is a quick summary: Inbound marketing is where you use marketing opportunities that allow the customer to find you, instead of interrupting them where they already are.

This includes:

• Website articles and blog posts written for people who are searching for your industry with specific terms

• Having a presence on social media websites people can subscribe to, like or follow, thus giving you permission to provide them with information.

• Writing blog posts they can subscribe to.

• Providing a newsletter or email series they can subscribe to, to learn even more about what you offer.

social media inbound marketingGreat, you need to provide information to the public, transparency is the new way to market. Now, what?

You have to understand the process. Here we go:

Or, like this:

  • Write content people are actively searching for (ie: SEO)
  • Educate them, and get them to sign up for more information (ie: Email marketing)
  • Turn them into a sale (ie: Sales)
  • Keep them interested, and keep in touch (ie: Social media)

These are just the basics, but now you understand how things move from one step to the other.

The big step is bringing it all together, which can be overwhelming when there are so many moving parts and you aren’t an expert with all of them.

How-To Tie Inbound Marketing All Together

Hubspot is a website software company that lets businesses start inbound marketing on their own. The software makes it easier to know what needs to be done next, yet it still lacks the expert knowledge for each step of the process.

For instance:

Hubspot helps you choose keywords and write content around them, but it doesn’t give you all of the tips you need to know to write a post that captures your readers’ attention and keep them on your site.

Hubspot helps you set up an email series, but it can’t help you convert phone calls to sales.

Get Expert Help

We can help. Even though you can get started on your own inbound marketing, we have experts who have experience with all steps of the process.

We can help you cut the learning curve to inbound marketing. We will help you start collecting leads and converting them into sales.

Our experience with keyword research, social media relationship building, and email optimization mean you won’t have to make mistakes to see what does and doesn’t work.

We hope you will subscribe to our blog to learn more about inbound marketing, but if you have any direct questions, feel free to comment and ask, or send us a message.

 

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photo credit: Justin in SD via photopin cc

photo credit: Rosaura Ochoa via photopin cc

Topics: social media, inbound marketing, landing pages, web presence, SEO, traffic