As an inbound marketer, I often have the opportunity to speak with businesses about the advantages of integrating inbound marketing into their promotion strategies.
While discussing the pros and cons of inbound marketing, I often encounter funny myths and preconceived notions. Today I decided to take the time to demystify some of them for you!
An e-book is the best offer for any conversion funnel!
This is something that bugs me a lot! Let’s get this straight, there are many ways to make offers and e-books are not even the tip of the iceberg!
Yes, they are great, but they are not the only way to offer high-quality information to your readers. For example, tools and spreadsheets are among my favourites simply because they work! Hubspot is doing a fantastic job of providing time-saving tools for people who follow it and consume its content.
Videos are also great! If a picture is worth a thousand words (not true from an SEO perspective…) imagine how effective videos can be. I have had much success with tutorials and webinars. It is incredible how useful a 5-minute video can be.
The core mission behind inbound marketing is to provide material that attracts and entertains your persona, and a tool that will enable someone to save a few hours of work is always well received!
Here is a list of the top 10 B2B Tech buyers most-consumed web content. This will give you a pretty good idea of the other types of value-added content you can generate.
Part 1 http://www.gtcomm.net/blog/top-15-b2b-tech-buyers-most-consumed-web-content-part-1/
Part 2 http://www.gtcomm.net/blog/top-15-b2b-tech-buyers-most-consumed-web-content-part-2/
I want results yesterday!
While you will be able to get a rather large number of visits from your publications, the real advantage of inbound marketing – the collection of qualified leads – still requires a fair amount of time and effort.
I often come across clients who want to gather 200 leads in one week and want to use inbound marketing. In those situations, I make sure to clearly explain to them the medium- and long-term advantages of inbound marketing, and the short-term advantages that outbound marketing strategies have.
Once everything is put into perspective, the client normally still wants its 200 leads a week but you also will have managed to obtain a short-term mandate for outbound marketing strategies, such as PPC, on top of your inbound mandate!
What’s the point of creating new content… SEO is dead!
While it is true that there have been a lot of changes in the last year, the art of SEO remains valid. Because search engines are now smarter then ever, the use of deceptive methods such as keyword-stuffing, guest posting, and other similar strategies is becoming obsolete (thank goodness!). More than ever, SEOs are required to optimize quality content and structure and thus provide a positive user experience on websites.
Inbound marketing doesn’t cost anything
While I wish this were true, there are various costs associated with inbound strategies. Businesses often focus on the drafting aspect and state that writing an article only takes a couple of hours and that everyone can do it… This is true if you’re aiming for poor content.
To write an article, your lead strategist must determine subjects and keywords that give you the opportunity to rank, and your writer needs to research the topic in order to be comfortable presenting it. Bear the following in mind the actual drafting time, the time required to edit and correct the text, the need to optimize the text and structure in terms of SEO, the step required to put this article online and share it in interest-targeted communities, and then responding to the comments you will receive!
This does not even cover the performance-tracking aspect or backlink research efforts!
Inbound marketing… Just another marketing tactic…
Inbound marketing is NOT a tactic but a complete strategy that encompasses many tactics. Take blogging for example. People often associate inbound marketing with blogging. While it is true that blogging is a major component of the inbound methodology, it is NOT its sole purpose.
Blogging is a tactic used to attract visitors to a website using highly targeted quality content. Once the visitor is on your website, the blogging aspect is pretty much done. The inbound marketer will now use other tactics with the goal of obtaining a conversion, pleasing this client, then starting all over again!
Inbound marketing is the synergy of many different tactics working together to delight your clients.
Final thoughts
There are many other myths and preconceived notions that proponents of inbound marketing encounter. These are the ones I encounter most frequently.
I hope this helped you to gain a better understanding of what inbound marketing is and what a company must do to use it effectively.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comment form below. In the meantime, have a nice day and keep delighting your customers!
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Great post, i will make a spanish versión. (i will trackback for the original post of course)
Regards from México City.
Thanks Jossué. Please get in touch with us before you publish anything, but feel free to link back to us as the original source material. Thanks!