Most of you all know that advertising your business can be a very challenging task, but maybe it would not be so tough if you knew how to advertise your business properly. That is where old vs. new ways of advertising comes into place. Old vs. new ways of advertising is really a difference between outbound and inbound marketing.
Back then businesses focused on outbound marketing where companies would reach out to customers and try to “find” them through different mediums of advertising. These mediums include direct mail, telemarketing, radio advertising, TV advertising, print advertising, and billboard advertising. The outbound marketing focus on “finding” customers can also be defined as “intrusion marketing,” or “interruption marketing” which means that this technique is very in your face, in other words it is push marketing.
Nowadays, businesses use inbound marketing where companies focus on “getting found by customers,” not the other way around. The mediums used in inbound marketing are as follows: social networking sites (Linkedin, Facebook etc.), blogs, web pages, podcasts, and videos. Basically, the idea is that if customers are interested in the market that your business is in, then they’ll likely find you through the internet.
Successful inbound marketing campaigns have 3 key components which are content, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media. First, content is important because it is the driving force that makes customers visit your site, or your business. Second, SEO allows your site to be searched in all of the search engines. Without SEO, customers won’t be able to visit your website unless they already know the web address. Third, social media is the most important component because it allows people to suggest your business to more people; it’s the new word of mouth, only now it’s online. You can also link your website to your social networking sites, as well as posting links to your social networking sites on your website, that way it will have a greater impact. Below is a figure of these 3 components so you can better visualize the concept.
Some of you might still be a little sceptical of this new way of advertising but here are the top reasons that inbound marketing is better than outbound marketing. First, costs are significantly lower. Moreover, this is an advantage for small businesses with a tight budget. For example, running a newspaper ad costs around $3,000 to $5,000 for a full page, and only one time, now that’s a lot of money that can be spent on better things for your business. Second, you target your audience better with inbound marketing, instead of running TV commercials, or ads on billboards, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc. you reach out to your audience via the internet. This is a great advantage because nowadays with TiVo or DVRs we skip through commercials; people have satellite radio because of no commercial, and people don’t buy newspapers or magazines anymore, they only read what they choose to read on the internet.
In today’s society, people spend 22.7% on social networking sites; that figure has increased by 43% in the last year from 15.8%. It is also estimated that by this year’s end, 30% of the world’s population will be online; that figure has double in the last 5 years. So ask yourself doesn’t it make much more sense to reach your audience through the internet where they spend most of their time? Well, you know the answer to that question. The diagram below depicts how much time is spent on different online sectors in one hour. Last but certainly not least, advertising on the internet will generate a higher return on investment (ROI), in fact the number one return on investment is search engine marketing. Therefore, inbound marketing is more of an investment, than an expense.
In conclusion, outbound marketing is no longer a good advertising technique. Because the internet can be accessed by anyone at anytime, anywhere in the world, inbound marketing is definitely the smart way to advertise your business. Think of mediums such as perezhilton.com which gets 14 million hits a day; movies always advertise on this site because of the high volume traffic. Youtube.com is another great medium; music artists now keep in touch with their fans by posting video updates, or some artists even premiere their music videos on youtube.com because there’s barely any music being played on MTV or Much Music. As you can see, inbound marketing is on the fast track; it’s out with the old, and in with the new.
Sources: thesaleslion.com, hubspot.com, virtualsupportsystems.com, softpedia.com, cnn.com, neilsen.com, ryanspoon.com
Post by Yasamin Faraj
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