In theory inbound marketing revolves around creating new value in the form of Internet buzz, educational materials, and entertainment. Instead of advertising, the idea is to develop the brand. This can take the form of Websites, search marketing, YouTube videos, Twitter, social media, and public relations. Basically you let them come to you.
But how do you get the word out initially? Why would people search your site unless you also use some kind of outbound marketing strategy?
Unlike what is argued in the Huspot case, I think it’s preferable to have a balance of inbound and outbound marketing.
What do you think?
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/2989/Inbound-Marketing-vs-Outbound-Marketing.aspx
3 comments:
Denis, I like your comment. I think you raise an interesting question. Inbound marketing might have many advantages but how does a start-up company begin? How do you get the word out initially?
I think 'word of mouth' is very powerful and can be a way to launch a start-up without outbound marketing. Have you read "The Tipping Point" by Malcom Gladwell (http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/index.html)? He talks about how social epidemics start, gain momentum and reach mass acceptance. Social epidemics refer to any social trend from customer products such as sneakers to things like urban crime. One of the points he makes is that there are different types of people among us. Some are so knowledgeable about a given thing that they may be borderline obsessive about it. This small group of people are trustworthy experts. Then there are connectors among us, or people who are wonderful at introducing people, ideas, or products to us all. One of Gladwell's points is that by finding the experts and connectors in a market, you can successfully spread your product, service, or idea.
Perhaps outward marketing should only be used to target experts and connectors, but you can also reach these people using inbound marketing. For example, the outdoor clothing company Patagonia did not market themselves through advertisements or other outbound marketing techniques. Instead, Patagonia worked and played along side of expert rock climbers and surfers to educate themselves on how to improve their gear and to educate their potential customers about what Patagonia is about. These outdoor experts then educated the rest of the market - not because they worked for Patagonia but because that is how social epidemics spread. In the end, this was hugely beneficial to Patagonia.
~Lindsay
Hi Denis! Thanks for your comment I believe that just opened Pandora's Box.
However, instead of justifying if inbound marketing is better than outbound marketing by itself, I would rather just to emphasize on the fact that inbound marketing is what the company is selling and what the company is all about.
I wouldn't go for outbound marketing if I were selling HubSpot services. Under my point of view, this is not congruent.
Furthermore, the same strategies that HubSpot uses to attract their customers; their customers may see them as potential techniques for themselves. All the way around (HubSpot using outbound techniques to sell its services) would be to discredit their own techniques.
That is what I think...
Cheerio
I'd like to response to Lindsay’s comment. I actually have a pretty good example on how we can achieve maximum marketing result with using minimum outbound marketing and by using expert to “advertise” the product using word of mouth, as Lindsay said in her comment. When I was working in Indonesia, we have a client who challenged us in marketing a new product with minimum advertisement budget. We came up with the idea “Community-based marketing”. It is basically where we use community as a channel to market our product. What we did was, we approached several prominent community leaders, ranging from religious community, sports club, to women’s organization. We used these experts to endorse our client’s product and as our connector to the market. This strategy was working very well and as the result we have a high sales growth and we can even compare to other similar product that used traditional marketing channel such as advertising and promotion. I think one of the reasons this strategy was working really well is because in Indonesia people tend to idolize their community leader. Whatever the leader said and do, they believe and tend to follow them.
I agree with Denis that it is unlikely to use inbound marketing without outbound marketing. Outbound marketing is used as a starter and to open ways to do a maximum inbound marketing. And from my past experience, we approached the community leader using outbound marketing strategy, and this opens a way to do a maximum inbound marketing.
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