What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a strategy that employs a variety of pull tactics which very often includes content marketing, blogging, social media, SEO, live events and others, to create awareness, generate demand and attract new customers.
In contrast to outbound marketing, where marketers attempt to find customers, Inbound marketing as opposed to outbound, or interruptive marketing, earns the attention of prospects at critical micro decision moments through useful content and information. If the watch phrase of outbound marketing is “always be selling,” then for inbound marketing it’s “always be helping.”
In our current world of short attention spans and access to too much information (including fake information), users want useful, reliable and trusted resources to learn from. Inbound marketing aims to give people who have clear intent – purchase intent, information seeking intent – the tools and answers they need to make informed decisions. The empowered buyer cares about trust, authenticity and peer recommendations. This flies in the face of outbound, attention seeking and interruptive marketing that hopes to spark interest, not be being in the right place at the right time, but just by being everywhere at all times.
Here are the four pillars of inbound marketing:
