Marketing used to be simple. You would scroll through your Rolodex, make cold calls and pitch to anyone who would listen. You would buy advertisements, send out mailings, hop from trade show to trade show, and hope you generate enough attention to bring customers to your door.
“That was outbound marketing. It wasn’t fun. It was expensive and unreliable.”
Now, thanks to the Internet, that old model won’t get you nearly as far as it used to. On one hand, outbound marketing has become a lot easier, so people’s mailboxes are clogged with unsolicited mail; you’re lucky if they even open it. At the same time, people are changing the way they look for information, using the Internet to discover the products and services they want, when they want them. Odds are if they can’t find you online, you’re not even in the game.
You need a new approach. Something that can cut through the noise, get potential customers to discover your business and get them interested in what you have to offer. Instead of reaching out to grab them with a big campaign, you want to make sure they find you.
This is inbound marketing, and it’s a revolution! Adopting an inbound marketing strategy can increase the number of leads you generate by more than 100 percent. Even better, getting inbound leads will cost you an average of 61 percent less than your old, outbound leads.
