How to Select an Inbound Marketing Agency

You wake up in the morning and turn on the radio while you get ready - during this time you get hit with a string of ads. On the way to work you listen to your favorite morning program, accompanied by more ads, and you drive by a slew of billboards.

At work you sift through irrelevant email blasts, receive a cold call and run into pop-up ads while browsing the Internet. I could continue through the rest of the day, but I think you see the point. What I have depicted there is part of the realm of outbound marketing, or traditional marketing; essentially an interruptive, one-way conversation that is initiated by companies.

The picture above should seem very familiar. In fact, according to HubSpot, your average human is inundated with over 2000 outbound marketing interruptions per day. For the modern marketer, understanding the intricacies of inbound vs outbound marketing is and will be one of the most crucial areas of knowledge.

So What is Inbound Marketing?

A great quote on this topic comes from Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist of Apple: "If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing."

Guy says this because inbound marketing is truly a more intelligent form of marketing. While outbound marketing pushes messages out, inbound marketing seeks to draw the right consumers in by providing educational content and a strategically-engineered web presence.

Inbound marketing aligns with the buyer's journey, providing relevant content such as blog posts, video, white papers, case studies, etc. at each stage that is designed to inform and nurture the right leads.

A Simple Inbound Example

Source: 24x7inbound.com

Most of us know what we want and what problems we need to solve. And for most of us the process of addressing those items starts with research on the web. Say for example you want to replace your roof but aren't too familiar with the process.

Rather than hoping you stumble across their bench ad, a roofing company could use inbound marketing to give you the experience you really want:

1. Awareness - with little knowledge of your options, you seek out info to build your expertise. The roofing company could provide a white paper (search engine optimized) discussing what is takes to replace a roof
2. Consideration - now that you have a basic understanding of the issue, you want to learn more in order to make an informed decision. The roofing company uses a video to compare material options and givepros and cons for each
3. Decision - with a better idea your options and preferences, you enter the last stage of your buyer's journey. The roofing company has crafted a case study that is focused specifically for the climate your home is in and breaks out options based on varying budgets

Now obviously it isn't guaranteed that you will go with that specific company, but since they have helped you at each stage along the way you will likely have built trust and loyalty for that brand - leagues beyond what any outbound method could achieve.

Some Compelling Stats

• 44% of direct mail is never opened

• 86% of people skip through television commercials

• 84% of 25 to 34 year olds have clicked out of a website because of an "irrelevant or intrusive ad"

• Inbound marketing channels can deliver up to 30 times the campaign conversion rate of traditional outbound direct-mail campaigns

• 54% more leads are generated by inbound tactics than traditional paid marketing
• Up to 80% of people ignore Google-sponsored ads

• Inbound leads cost 60% less than outbound leads

• 80% of business decision-makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus in an advertisement

The Bottom Line

Outbound marketing is not going away - in fact some organizations still spend as much as 90% of their marketing budgets on outbound marketing. The inbound trumpets are sounding though and many marketing decision makers are taking notice and action.