Online marketing for local businesses: what is inbound marketing?
What is inbound marketing? Why is inbound marketing important to you and your local business?
Online local business marketing is where qualified customers look for you.
Elsewhere we discuss What is internet marketing? itself:
“…a marketing relationship is a specific conversation between the company and a market. Therefore, Internet and online marketing are relationships between the company and customers and prospects that take place in today’s new media and the new media of the future.
How have new customers found you in recent months?
Today, people find out about your local business in two main ways:
- Pass recommendations by word of mouth, or
- Find you on the results page of a search engine
Word of mouth depends on the goodwill of existing customers. How would you like people to post word of mouth recommendations online? Why not spend zero dollars marketing your local business? What is Outbound Marketing? In traditional outbound marketing, companies focus on finding customers through building brand awareness, advertising, and promotion. Outbound marketing includes:
- Focus on your product and/or service, which is your advertising and promotions,
- Focus on your sales transaction,
- Focus on your business with public and media relations,
- Focus on your after-sales support and customer service, and
- Focus on your customer after the fact to measure customer satisfaction.
Every day, a typical consumer is overwhelmed with over 2,000 outbound marketing interruptions! They have gotten quite creative in blocking these interruptions, including caller ID, spam filtering, Tivo, and satellite radio. Customers need to find a very good reason to visit your local business. Marketing local businesses online is quite a challenge!
What is permission marketing?
Alternatives to intrusive and increasingly ineffective outbound marketing are based on what Seth Godin calls permission marketing:
“Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) to deliver anticipated, personal, and relevant messages to the people who really want to receive them…”
“He realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to gain their attention.”
In order for the business to attract the lead, the lead must provide:
- Explicit permission (eg, email or catalog request), or
- Implicit permission (eg, following a link in search engine results)
Furthermore, Godin says:
“To get permission, you make a promise. You say, ‘I’ll do x, y, and z, I hope you’ll give me permission by listening.’ And then this is the hard part, that’s all you do. You don’t assume you can do more.”
What is inbound marketing?
Google reports more than a billion searches each month for local products and services. Fully qualified prospects are already searching for products and services in your industry. Inbound Marketing is when customers call you to:
- Make appointments,
- Purchase of products, gold
- information gain
When customers find and like you, you can get business from them, their friends, and their family.
“Delivery is the milkman’s revenge…it’s the essence of the permit,” says Godin.
Online marketing is starting to make more sense…
Here is a blog discussion: What is Internet Marketing?. Look for more conversations and bright ideas about the Internet and money: Marketing your local business online makes it easy for eager buyers to find your local business and contact you. They ask you to buy. Will you be surprised to find a multitude of eager buyers ready to buy and looking for exactly what you offer?