Inbound Marketing Benefits Today

In certain ways, technology has destroyed traditional marketing techniques. Customers now routinely blow through TV commercials, and they certainly aren't reachable through phone calls or direct mail. (There is a reason the term "junk mail" came into existence.)

So how do you run effective marketing in the 21st century? Thankfully, there are still ways to do it, and one way is through inbound marketing. In some ways, modern marketing is driven by merit more than money. You can spend a million dollars on a slick TV commercial only to have it ignored by your targeted viewers; however, a business that spends time on providing value to customers on the front end can stand out from the crowd and get noticed, even without an expensive marketing budget.

SEO, blogs, and social media marketing are all examples of inbound marketing, and these three methods of drawing in new customers can go a long way in improving your business. With SEO, you're taking steps to make your website appear higher in natural search engine results, where customers overwhelmingly tend to do their clicking. With blogs, you're providing fresh content and touching on secondary topics that may not fit into the primary areas of your website. And with social media marketing, you're giving your business a personality and building trust with customers as you typically offer special deals to followers and alert them to news and updates to your product line.

The art to inbound marketing occurs in the initial stage. You need to make your business attractive enough to gain customer interest. Once the customer is interested and coming to you voluntarily, your conversion rate is easily much higher than with other advertisement methods that may have reached the customer in unwelcome ways. Remember, the key is communicating well, providing value, and demonstrating your business's positive role in the context of the customer's life. With many different options, inbound marketing can be both fun and lucrative.