Marketing is a totally different game now. like most things, change is good. If you are unfamiliar with what Inbound marketing is, well, get like Oprah, and sit back and relax, because I am going to lay down the law and inform you like no other. Inbound marketing is one of those cool words that you drop when you are hanging w/ your friends to impress them. The kind of word that no one really knows what it means unless you are in marketing (at least that’s my personal experience). In short, inbound marketing is when you are able to bring visitors in, without having to spend money to have marketers try and grab their attention because you have dope, compelling, interesting content. Since being intrigued by marketing, and just about everything that has to do with it, I purchased an article from Harvard Business School, HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0. You might be asking yourself, “Why is he reading this?”, well it’s because I care about you.

One company that really utilized inbound marketing was, HubSpot. HubSpot might as well re-name their company to HubSport, because they are running this Inbound marketing game. Founded in 2006 by MIT graduates, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. Halligan and Shah noticed that the internet played a HUGE role on how small businesses operated. Once Halligan graduated, he became a VC (Venture Capitalist). While he was a VC, he noticed that start-ups were struggling on how to capture the internet to build a business. So, naturally they wanted to help them. HubSpot builds software products that help companies replace outbound marketing techniques with inbound marketing techniques. Outbound marketing is the age-old technique of throwing messages at the consumer via commercials, billboards, trade shows, telemarketing, and so on. Lets be real though, outbound marketing is becoming an archaic way of marketing. Less and less businesses are becoming successful through outbound marketing. We can screen for telemarketers with caller-id, we can record our TV shows and then fast-forward through the commercials, when we get junk mail, we toss it into the trash. Companies need to realize this!!! These companies need to try inbound marketing. An easy way for them to reach their customer is through setting up a blog and blogging impactful content. People will come straight to you when they want to learn about something and in return feel like you are a reliable company, and purchase your products. HubSpot’s vice president of marketing Mike Volpe couldn’t explain it better, “Instead of interrupting people that don’t care, why not help those who want what you’re offering to find you? We have found that building interesting tools is a more effective marketing tool than doing advertising. Things like this get people curious and draw them in”. For instance, when I am interested in purchasing a new clothing item, I often read reviews online from websites like Complex, Four-Pins, and HighSnobiety. I like to stay current with that is going on in the fashion world, and these websites write really interesting and insightful articles on the clothing companies that I find aesthetically pleasing. These fashion websites also offer an option to subscribe. So, whenever Complex posts new articles you get notified to check them out. HubSpot knows that consumers do this, so they create content that relates to their Google/ Bing search. For instance, since people strongly dislike television ads, HubSpot creates videos that potential customers want to see. Instead of buying display ads in magazines, HubSpot creates blogs that people subscribe to and read religiously.

Sidenote: The recently dropped Aimé Leon Dore x KITH collection looks like straight fire.

To really be successful at Inbound marketing, it takes three skills:

1. You have to be able to write compelling content that will attract customers to your business. This content has to be useful and not just something that you are promoting. You can always tell when a post in Complex is promoted, or they were paid by another company to write about the most recent clothing collection. It lacks authenticity, consistency, and the people in the comment section write things like, “How much did you get paid to review this clothing brand?” and “This is why I don’t visit your site anymore”, this type of comment always cracks me up because they say they don’t visit their site anymore, yet they just read that entire article.
2. The ability to have your content easily found on the internet. For this to happen you have to be skilled in the area of *DUN DUN DUN DUUUUUN*, Search Engine Optimization.
3. Attract and engage lots of followers and have them interact with your content regularly. This can be hard for businesses to do, but once they are able to succeed in capturing a large, interactive following, they will be consistently cutting-checks.

Hopefully you are still with me, and you don’t feel like your head is going to explode because of all this #fire #content. HubSpot does the exact opposite of cold calling. They were able to figure out a way to have their consumers call them when they are in need of assistance or insight. Cold calling sucks, and can be extremely discouraging and make you feel like the gif above this post. S/O to HubSpot for finding out a way to get around cold calling. HubSpot created a software that embodies the idea of inbound marketing and makes it easy to use. The idea of the software is to generate leads more efficiently, and to convert them into sales. The software includes templates to design content for websites, blogs, and social networking sites; tools to help their customers increase exposure online; tools to get the right customers; and tools to analyze their results. This is very valuable because coding can be hard, and coming up with a way to display it in a creative way can be even harder. HubSpot does all the dirty work for you. After three years of being in business (2009), HubSpot had 1,000 very diverse customers. All of these customers had been acquired through inbound marketing. Here are the different ways that HubSpot attracted their customers…

1. They had a powerful website that attracted more than 300,000 unique visitors in 2008. The website was full of white papers, webinars, podcasts, and a blog that provided information about Web 2.0 and inbound marketing strategies.
2. HubSpot created and managed an 8,000-member LinkedIn group called Pro-Marketers.
3. Employees created a TV-show that would air every Friday called HubSpot TV, a live streaming podcast, and had a YouTube channel that featured video spoofs. Below is one of them…

At the time of this blog post, this video had over 127,000 views. That is a lot of exposure, and clearly proving that what they are doing is reaching the audiences. HubSpot’s most successful software was its freeware. These software programs were free (I know big surprise) and they were small and available on the internet. The three most popular programs were:

1. Website Grader (which I have used and is damn helpful)
2. Twitter Grader (which I have not used, but will be trying out once I complete this blog post. *Promotion Time* Follow me at @SomeFire_Com)
3. Facebook Grader (which I might use, but who really uses FaceBook anymore?)

These helpful programs grade your social media hubs and evaluate how your profiles are performing. Once individuals used these awesome freeware’s they would fill out a lead form to get notified when other dope freeware and articles dropped. BOOM, Inbound marketing. While increasing my knowledge on the ever so interesting inbound marketing, I stumbled across an article published by Marketo (competitor of HubSpot), titled Amplify Your Impact: How to Multiply the Effects of Your Inbound Marketing Program. Marketo discussed something that I found quite interesting called, the Inbound Marketing Multiplier. They believe that if you want to make inbound marketing work for your company, you need to have three ingredients:

1. An outbound marketing strategy
2. A corporate communications strategy
3. A nurturing or marketing automation strategy

Once again, outbound marketing is any paid marketing – both online and offline. Marketo believes that if you combine outbound and inbound marketing, then you will see greater results. Corporate marketing is still a very important aspect of inbound marketing. Corporate marketing is much more than press releases, it also consists of branding, analyst relations, products launches, programs to up-sell to and retain customers, and communications, both internal and external. You want to stay consistent and come off as trustworthy, knowledgeable, and display quality. You want to create a strong brand image. For instance, Nike vs. Adidas. One might choose Nike even though they are aware of Adidas. Consumers display customer loyalty towards brands like Nike because they believe in the product, and think that it will enhance the way that they perform. As you watch the video below, you see Cristiano Ronaldo racing through cones wearing the new (at the time) mercurial vapor’s. Nike is hinting at the fact that these new shoes will make you faster than ever, which they have been hinting at since the 80’s.

The last ingredient of the inbound marketing multiplier is nurturing or marketing automation strategy. According to Marketo, “Marketing automation is the use of technology to manage and automate the process of converting prospective customers into actual buyers”. The leads you have just generated via inbound marketing are still looking around for the best inbound marketing software. They are at risk of have a short-life span for your company. This is where nurturing comes into play. You want to build a relationship with that customer. Marketing is all about emotions and relationships. You need to take care of it, feed it, or else it will go somewhere else for assistance.

If you want to learn even more about inbound marketing, head on over to HubSpot or Marketo. Also, I was not paid by HubSpot or Marketo to talk about them so highly. I truly believe that they are at the forefront of inbound marketing, and offer an excellent services. BUT if HubSpot/ Marketo wants to throw me some money, I will not turn it down. I am a college student with certain dietary restrictions (deathly allergic to wheat, chicken, dairy, and seafood) and gluten-free food is damn expensive. All in all, get with inbound marketing so that you can lay out your competition like this Michigan State player did to this Baylor Bears player.

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