Marketing Blogs
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by Craig Wilsonon Dec 18 |
Marketers need to turn to 'inbound'
Did you know that the internet is now the most consumed media in Australia?
According to the ‘2009 Nielsen Annual Internet and Technology’ report the average Australian spends 16.1 hours per week online. This is compared to TV at 12 hours per week, radio at 8.8 hours, Video at 5.4 hours, online radio at 4.6 hours, PC video at 4.6 hours, mobile at 3.7 hours, newspaper at 2.8 hours and magazines at two hours.
That’s right, Australians spend more time online than consuming TV and newspapers combined – more time online than radio, newspaper and magazines combined.
So here is the big question for business in 2010: are your marketing resources being allocated to the right media or are you still marketing like its 1999?
There are two forms of marketing:
Outbound marketing – where you spend money trying to interrupt your potential customers with your message. This is what we have been doing as advertisers for the last half a century.
Inbound marketing – where your potential customers find you and decide to find out more. Inbound has taken off with the advent of online search and burgeoning social media networks.
Outbound marketing is like a shotgun; inbound marketing is like a magnet.
You are probably already doing outbound marketing, so here are some reasons you should be considering inbound marketing in 2010:
- Outbound is becoming less effective. Consumer’s are flooded with choice and have the ability to block your message. Timeshifting of media is becoming easier thanks to new digital technology and consumers increasingly resent interruption marketing.
- Meanwhile over 90% of people begin their online search for a product or service using a search engine. Once upon a time we let our fingers do the walking, now we let Google, Bing and Yahoo! do the work for us. Therefore it has become essential for businesses to be easily found online.
- Professional search engine optimisation, great web content and a social media strategy all help you get found online and can lead to increased traffic to your business, more inquiries and more sales.
- The nature of inbound marketing leads and inquiries is that they are highly qualified and motivated. They have made a conscious decision to search for your product or service, rather than reacting to an intrusive message, and therefore improve your sales-conversion potential.
- Inbound marketing is investment in your organisation’s future. Effective search engine optimisation and great content has a lasting effect on your online presence, unlike outbound advertising that stops as soon as your budget runs out.
- The great news is that inbound marketing is extremely cost effective and totally measurable. Its no longer necessary to spend obscene amounts of money on marketing with little measurable effect. A good online strategy allows you to easily measure traffic, unique visitors, keyword search results, time on site and conversion through to inquiry. Your CEO will love your ROI reports.
- Most of your competitors haven’t mastered effective internet marketing... yet. Now’s your chance to get a head start on them and own a new space. It’s simple, your company should be fishing where the fish are. If your customers are now spending more time online than they are consuming other media, shouldn’t you be allocating more of your marketing resources to a superior web presence?
For business to business marketing are they going to the social networks in business hours?
I recently sent out an email to 2000 events industry people asking if they could view my web site, sure their was a hint of self promotion there but more so I wanted to know if people could:
1: View the video and 2: View my drop down menu system
The results scared me a little
Many people could not view the video, being flash, many company computers do not allow flash or active X Controls to work (or Javascript) for that matter, with the reason being that many virases are are ignited via flash or Active X Controls., so their for Youtube will not work- many of the Government run computers have Javascript turned off. these same people will not be able to view youtube video (or google video etc)
Worse still the menu is (or was- I did change it all) was javascript and DHTML lovely looking drop down menu- that no one could see. (It is the same for the Meetings & Events association web site- their drop down section will not work on many computers) so if a social media site has javascript as part of it's process, then there is going to be problems
So if we are to embrace social media our customers computers need to be able to view the technology, I find most home computers can view and connect to the social media, but the company computers cannot. so if the only time our customers can view social media is when they are home then this will require a different design approach than creating a full on business web site on facebook, as our customers are looking at the social media in their non work time.
Do you have any comments with regards to Businesses looking for other businesses during business hours.
With regards to the magnet comment- This does depend on the business