Inbound marketing defined
What is Inbound marketing? It is the idea that you should focus on inbound traffic generated from blogs and social media sites. This means instead of spending time and money on ads spend it on things like blogs and social sites where people will find you naturally.
Inbound marketing an old idea with a new name
Is this new or have people put a name to it? I think a lot of Internet marketers make a living off of playing with words. Many guys find a buzz word, re-pack ideas that have been floating around in the collective unconsciousness of the biosphere, and sell it.
The idea of using multiple channels to attract business, is not new. Blogs and social media is web 2.0 and been around for several years. inbound marketing is not new, but rather a new name for web 2.0 marketing.
Ecclesiastes wrote thousands of years ago,What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
I am not a big believer in social media or putting links on on other people’s blogs or forums for links. I have done this and it does not generate meaningful traffic, at least not compared to organic searches.
New marketing idea tell tale sign
The first tell tale sign that they are using a buzz word to sell is they start with a case of: traditional way of Internet marketing vs new way of Internet marketing.
Then drop more buzz words and maybe talk about how Obama won in the USA with inbound marketing. This stating the obvious, to get people saying ‘yes’. Before they make their sales pitch.
Getting people to say ‘yes’ is an old fashion sales technique.
Hubspot an inbound marketer examined
Now hats off to these guys as they site is much larger than mine and they know what they are doing. Here is an example, www.hubspot.com This site went from nowhere to one of the top sites on the web by what they claim is ‘Inbound marketing’ (the new buzz word), that is social media marketing. They have an Alexa rating of about 3000. In my opinion that is a very strong site. I do not have that.
However, it is odd that these social marketing gurus have only average stats in the social marketing sphere. This is what I found out. They only have 612 members on face book and about 3000 on Twitter. No big deal in my opinion.
Something else does not add up with the crowd cheering on inbound marketing?
I looked up a few people who are following inbound marketing on the Twitter and Facebook and raving over their book and hubspot and how much it has helped them, and you know what? They have no traffic on their sites, or very little. Again I am not knocking anyone here, it is just that something does not add up.
I think hubspot achieved amazing success and they are winners, but I think I would have to figure out what they did rather than attribute it to inbound marketing because the numbers do not add up.
I think the inbound marketing website developers have achieved their success because they were somehow able to hitch a wagon to a guy like Seth Godin rather than using their own system. This is my personal conclusion, and would be open to hear a counter to this as I want to stay objective.
Cullensabcs.com knows nothing about SEO or social media marketing
Now contrast that with one of my favorite sites www.cullensabcs.com. She is just some lady that has kids videos on YouTube. She knows nothing about SEM at all, yet has 1,044 friends on Facebook. She also has 10s of millions of views on YouTube.
I think her site is an excellent example of a site getting popular organically, by her natural, authentic videos, than jumping on the latest SEO band wagon like “Inbound marketing”. Maybe she is living the idea and not talking about it or reading about. Therefore, my conclusion is do not believe the hype. It is better to focus on content then inbound marketing.
My point is focus on content and not the latest SEO craze, including inbound marketing, which is just stating the obvious and distracting you from your focus on developing content.
Leave a reply to Inbound marketing is a waste