The Importance of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is important to every business because you waste less time presenting your message to those that aren’t interested. Imagine that you own a sandwich shop and you pay a sign spinning guy $15 an hour to spin the sign at the curb out on the street to get people to come in and buy a sandwich. Over an 8 hour day, that’s $120 in marketing expenses to have him out there broadcasting your message of delicious sandwiches to the masses.

What if there was some way to have that sign guy on the curb only spinning the sign for people that were already hungry for a sandwich? You could probably have him out there for an hour a day, saving $125, and getting your message in front of people that were already further along in the “what should I have for lunch” thought process than “I’m hungry”. Perhaps you have to pay him $20 instead of $15 for that hour but you’re still way ahead overall- that’s the advantage of inbound marketing. It provides you with more qualified leads, at the most basic level.

A classic online marketing mistake that many make is to sink a lot of money into a PPC campaign, thinking it will show immediate dividends- PPC is like a slot machine, right? Put some money in, get some back, adjust, try again. Rinse, repeat, until your CPA is low enough to make you happy. However, Google and other online ad platforms make it really simple to accidentally overspend a budget very ineffectively. In an effort to show your ads to as many people as possible, it’s very easy to cast too wide a net. Inbound marketing can help assure that you’re getting people who are looking for what you are selling- rather than looking for a job in your industry or researching the topic for a book or whatever other reason a poorly optimized campaign might draw unqualified traffic.

Users of all media platforms are bombarded with advertising messages constantly; it can become easy to become lost in a sea of noise or just completely ignored. Banner blindness is a very real thing, as is Ad Blocking software. Inbound Marketing combats these realities by making you available when and your potential clients are looking- even if they don’t know that it’s you they are looking for yet.

The elements of inbound marketing can be vast; however, you can start simply as well. Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Participation and having an active, optimized blog are all keys to attracting those warm leads. Inbound marketing is not “cheap” in terms of time or money or attention- but it will lead to the end result that you’re following up with leads who want what you’ve got.