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What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is a strategy in which a business generates leads by providing valuable content that draws customers to them.
Examples include the use of blog posts, guest blogging, social media and podcasts. Inbound marketing is often more cost-effective than outbound marketing, which includes cold sales calls and paid advertising. One driving principle behind inbound marketing is that potential customers who search online for certain keywords and topics or frequent certain blogs have already demonstrated a need for what a business offers. Thus, inbound marketing is more efficient in helping the business obtain customers.
A key component of inbound marketing is that the content used in this method must be truly value-based in some way. For instance, content that is inspirational, funny, analytical, educational, thought-provoking or newsy.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a strategy used to develop and distribute consistent, relevant and useful content for audiences. The purpose of content marketing is to attract and engage a target audience with the intent of generating traffic and creating a profitable customer action. This form of marketing is used as a communication tool with potential customers, without the goal of selling a product or service.
Then content marketing is viewed as a form of marketing that delivers information to customers instead of promoting specific products or services.
Content marketing’s primary objective is to make a prospect or client more knowledgeable. The strategy of content marketing revolves around delivering consistent and valuable information to customers with the reward of their business and loyalty. Thus, content marketing attempts to provide an abundance of information to a target audience in order to alter or enhance behavior.
This form of marketing is a useful component integrated into a multifaceted marketing strategy. Content marketing concentrates on creating and owning content-based media.
The different forms of content marketing include social media marketing, SEO, PR and inbound marketing. Social media content marketing and SEO are the two forms of content marketing that help businesses reach a specific audience with specialized content. An effective PR strategy can incorporate content that readers are interested in, which helps attract an audience that is not already interested in the business, the products or services.
What are examples of marketing tools?
Examples of marketing tools include email marketing services, mobile apps and inbound marketing.
With the right combination and use of marketing tools, small businesses stand a good chance of putting themselves on equal footing with larger businesses.
Email marketing services are designed to make it easier for businesses to advertise and market themselves. Such services allow businesses to create newsletters and craft emails. An individual can either use the templates that come with the service, or he can create his own original design. As of 2014, the use of social media marketing is steadily on the rise for businesses, but emailing still has its uses as a way for a business owner to sell his products and communicate with his audience.
Mobile apps have also proven to be an effective marketing tool for interacting with and engaging customers. With the abundance of mobile development platforms, creating a marketing mobile app has become more affordable. A business owner who either can't afford a mobile app or doesn't find much value in having a mobile app can consider making his website mobile-friendly.
Inbound marketing involves creating blog posts, social media content, ebooks and white papers in order to draw customers. Advantages of this marketing tool are that it's inexpensive and has a low barrier to entry method.
Indirect marketing is crucial to an organizations long-term success and requires a level of skill that the business owner may not posses, such as search engine optimization skills to increase website visibility online. A business owner may be forced to hire a skilled professional for such kind of tasks. Indirect marketing is also quite sluggish as compared to direct marketing.
The New Methodology
The Inbound Methodology covers each and every step taken, tool used, and lifecycle stage traveled through on the road from stranger to customer. It empowers marketers to attract visitors, convert leads, close customers, and delight promoters. The new methodology acknowledges that inbound marketing doesn’t just happen, you do it. And you do it using tools and applications that help you create and deliver content that will appeal to precisely the right people (your buyer personas) in the right places (channels) at just the right times (lifecycle stages).
Inbound Marketing Systems Compared
James Eckburg
http://markethive.com/eckburgjoe
