Inbound Marketing VS. Traditional Marketing: The Advantages and Disadvantages
Traditional marketing has always consisted primarily of outbound marketing; that is to say that marketers have focused on going out and actively soliciting new customers for their business. With this type of marketing business owners usually employed relatively invasive techniques including cold-calling, print advertising in magazines, newspapers and mailings, and television advertising. All of these types of traditional marketing have one thing in common – they are designed to interrupt what a person is doing and force them to think about the company, product or service that is being advertised. While traditional marketing has some advantages, many companies today find a new type of marketing – inbound marketing – to be more effective.
Inbound marketing works by creating content that people actually want to see, encouraging potential clients to seek out the company being marketed, rather than the company seeking out people. Much of this is done online through social networking sites. Good examples of inbound marketing includes creating videos for free online consumption, posting informational articles on a company website, and creating a blog that people subscribe to because they want the information it contains. In this way businesses can often spend less money and end up attracting a more appropriate potential customer base.
Let’s look at some specific advantages and disadvantages of both traditional outbound marketing and inbound marketing.
The Advantages of Traditional Marketing Traditional outbound marketing, including television and print ads, presence at trade shows, cold calling centers and email marketing, provides a number of advantages. First, outbound marketing can be relatively easy, if expensive. That is, a company can put their message in front of thousands – even millions – of people in an instant with TV, or in a week with magazines, and so forth. Traditional marketing gives a SMB the chance to deliver a direct sales pitch to customers. Some forms of outbound marketing, such as cold-calling and trade show exhibitions, can allow immediate interaction with customers and answering of questions, which can be very effective.
The Disadvantages of Traditional Marketing Traditional marketing also has a number of disadvantages. Foremost, technology such as caller ID, call blocking, digital video recorders and spam filters are all making it more difficult for companies to get their advertising in front of people’s eyes. Large scale advertising (print or TV) also spends a lot of money to send a message to people who may not be part of the target audience – it simply casts too wide a net in many cases. Finally, people are becoming adverse to the idea of the “hard sell” and are simply not as open to direct outbound marketing as they used to be.
The Advantages of Inbound Marketing Inbound marketing, which involves technology and information that draws people to a company out of curiosity or interest including blogs, e-books, YouTube videos, white papers, articles and the like, can provide a number of advantages for you, as a small or medium business. Inbound marketing allows for better targeting of the desired market, without so much marketing to those who do not fit the desired demographic. This means that you may reach fewer people, but those people will be more likely to have an interest in your product. Inbound marketing can cost less; note we wrote “can” as this will also be covered in disadvantages. But generally inbound marketing costs less than TV ads, print ads or hiring a call center. Inbound marketing is considered by many to be an investment; with inbound marketing you put information into cyberspace that can attract new customers continually, rather than just running a single brief ad on TV or in print that comes and goes.
The Disadvantages of Inbound Marketing While it has many advantages, inbound marketing does have some negatives as well. The biggest one is that there is a lot of competition not only for people’s money but for their attention; it can be challenging to get people to visit and linger on your website, Facebook page, YouTube site and so on. Also, while inbound marketing can be less expensive than traditional marketing, it can also be expensive in that you may need to hire technologically savvy people to make your marketing work. Furthermore, while inbound marketing is an investment it also takes time and does not necessarily produce the immediate returns that some outbound marketing can.
5 Tips for Search Engine Optimization
We all know that technology is everywhere, but what’s more is that today every company – no matter how small – is really expected to have a website. Your website is a great way for your customers (and potential customers) to learn about you including reading a list of services you provide, learning some of your company history, and finding your hours and location. But if you use your website correctly you can really take advantage of it to pull in new customers from across the world wide web. How? By effectively using search engine optimization (SEO).
With SEO you use keywords and other methods to ensure that your website ranks high in all the major search engines. Of course this is important as most web surfers only look at the first page of search results before clicking on a website – you want to do your best to ensure that your company shows up in that first page of results. Sure, you can do this by paying to be a sponsor on Google, Yahoo and all the major search engines, but you can also do it with your SEO. Following are 5 tips for improving your SEO and helping your business to rate higher.
Tip #1: Use New and Unique Content in Your Website Most search engines rank websites by the content, not just by headers and titles. Web crawlers are always looking for new, relevant information – words that are original. This is why websites such as copyspace.com have become so popular – they provide a way to judge how original articles are. Thus, to rank as high as possible in search results your website needs to have information that is unique to just your website, with pages that are unique from each other. This means a number of things – even when you are stating information that is similar to other companies, you need to ensure that it reads very differently, that it is unique.
Similarly, your own web pages need to be written in a way that each is totally original. And, if you cross promote with another site, put out advertisements online or post press releases, these need to be worded so that each is original. In addition to originality, relevance of information is paramount – most search engines assume that more updated information is more relevant. So, it is important that you update your pages frequently both so they are fresh and accurate for your viewers but also so that the search engines read them as newly modified. At the absolute least update every page each year.
Tip #2: Add a Blog Part of keeping your website fresh can involve blogging. Adding a blog helps ensure that you have continuous, fresh content constantly appearing on your website. Allowing replies to the blog also provides a method of letting your customers feel involved. In this way a blog can help you with SEO (ensure that your blog writer understands SEO and works keywords into their blogging) and can also help you provide general customer satisfaction by providing customers a platform to voice their thoughts or ask questions. If you do allow for customers to post to the blog ensure that you are monitoring it to answer questions; when a customer takes the time to post a question and no one bothers to answer they will feel unwanted and are likely to take their business elsewhere.
Tip #3: Flesh out Your Site with Informative Articles Yet another way to keep your site original and interesting, while also filling it with dozens (even hundreds) of opportunities to use SEO to advance your rankings is by posting informative articles on your website. Let’s say you own a plumbing company. You have your standard “About Us” and “Services” pages, “FAQs” and a few others. That’s all fine. But, what if a customer in your area thinks they can fix their leaking bathtub faucet on their own? They won’t be searching for anything that appears in any of these pages. They may be searching for “Do it yourself tub repair.” So, put some articles like this on your website. Then, end the article with a call to action – the action of calling your company.
Tip #4: Create New Pages for Each Keyword This idea of filling your site with articles fits in with another well known SEO marketing tool – create new pages for every keyword that is important to your business. Your site will rank highest in search engine results if every possible keyword that your clients are likely to search for is represented a number of times throughout your site. The best way to do this is to have a single keyword or phrase represented on each page of your site. You can accomplish this on all the basic site pages (About Us, Contact Us, etc.), but posting blogs or articles is another great way to do this right.
Tip #5: Use Keywords and Key Phrases Carefully So, we’ve talked a lot about how important it is to have your keywords all over your website, but it is also important to evaluate your keywords themselves. First, remember that there are likely thousands of sites like yours, so key “words” are so overused that they will often not really get your site the attention you want. Instead, use keyword “phrases” of two or three words that are phrases likely to be searched for by your potential customers. Remember that these key phrases should be placed in your title and also in the first paragraph of all web pages. Finally, ensure that the key phrases appear in your meta description, headers and alt tags.
5 Marketing Tips for Small Business
We have all heard that 80% of small businesses fail in their first year. Most of the rest fail within the next four years. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one is that small business managers simply do not take proper advantage of marketing as a method of growing sales. Part of this is because they think that they need a lot of money to have a marketing budget; this is not necessarily the case. Following are five easy tips that you can implement in any small business today to start growing your company and increasing revenue with little money out of pocket.
1) Advertise to get sales now This one may sound obvious, but the truth is that too many small businesses advertise in a way that is fit only for large business. Specifically, a large business can afford to do general brand advertising; that is, they can spend time and money advertising their name, with the idea that customers will know their name when they are finally in the market for the company’s particular type of product. They can afford to invest now for potential future returns. By contrast, your small business probably needs to get sales right now. Thus, you need to advertise more directly, in an attempt to earn current sales, not future potential sales.
2) Cross promote with other businesses One of the most overlooked areas of marketing in small business is the cross promotion. Say you own a pottery shop in a high end area; down the street is a high end candy store. You have your customer list and they have theirs, and the lists are probably quite a bit different. Cross promote. Work together to advertise some of your upcoming pottery specials on the chocolate shop’s next email, and vice versa. Also, you can each give out coupons for the other business to all customers in your shop. In this way you each grab a slightly different customer base, but one that is still geographically desirable.
3) Use technology Gone are the days when the only sales tool available to small business, besides word of mouth, was door to door salespeople or expensive print advertisements and mailings. Today, technology brings the small business owner myriad methods for marketing a small business in ways that are inexpensive and environmentally friendly. Every company today must have a web presence, so if you do not have a website then have one built immediately. You do not need to sell things on your site, but you need to have at least a basic informational website where people can go to see your hours, location and what services or products you offer. Direct mailings may seem a bit old school, but technology makes them less expensive than ever before. There are many websites, such as VistaPrint.com where you can create your own eye catching mailings online and purchase them for just pennies a postcard. Even better are email mailings. One tip, when using email be sure to use a good subject line that lets the customer know that you are a legitimate business whom they signed up with before, not some SPAM to be deleted.
4) Offer referral benefits and frequent flyer cards We have all heard that it is easier to keep an existing customer than to create a new one. But why not do both at the same time?! By offering excellent customer service and products you encourage others to spread the word about you. Give them points every time they come back and let them accumulate those points to use towards a discount or special offer and you encourage their continued patronage. Then, take it a step further and give your valued customer incentives for bringing in new customers. For example, if you own a message parlor, send your existing customers a coupon that offers themselves and a guest a certain percentage off if they come in with a new client.
5) Offer at least two levels of products or service Remember that products and service are rarely one size fits all. Some clients are looking for value and low cost. Others are willing to pay for a higher end product. Whether you sell a product or a service, always offer at least two levels – a value level and a premier level. This way you satisfy everyone, no matter their budget and goals.
Highlights from the 2011 World Climate Summit
Durban, South African played host to the second annual World Climate Summit this past December 3rd and 4th. The summit’s website and initiatives brings together literally thousands of companies from business, finance and multiple governments to discuss how various initiatives could be developed to make sustainable business profitable. The event itself was attended by over 800 representatives of these various companies, organizations and governments.
The two day summit offered an opportunity for various leaders around the world to discuss business-focused climate solutions. They looked at ways that global companies and governments can work to make business economically feasible and environmentally sustainable at the same time, and how these businesses can have a positive impact on the environment overall.
It Takes a Village The first World Climate Summit was held in 2010 in Cancun. That meeting focused on starting a dialog among business people to recognize the value of sustainable business and the positive impact that it could have on the world as a whole. That first summit garnered support for the concept that businesses could be a part of a successful environmental solution – that it takes a village to raise a healthy environment.
The second World Climate Summit this year took this a step further; this summit looked at how businesses could actually profit not just from their own sustainable practices but also from supporting various sustainability and environmentally beneficial initiatives in other companies. According to the chair of the summit committee, the goal of this second summit was to learn and share by collaborating on strategies and new initiatives that could address global climate change and help improve the global economy, from a green perspective.
Supporting a Dedicated Community All year around, the World Climate Summit organization works to support interaction between its members, brainstorming ideas for climate improvement. During the Summit itself it was recognized that companies, according to the Summit Chair, need to speak loudly and clearly, announcing the need to go green in a voice that can be heard around the world.
Among the highlights of what the Summit discussed are the following:
- The need to develop a sound plan for phasing out the use of HFC’s (the most damaging greenhouse gasses) and striving for a planet wide “net zero” deforestation policy by 2020.
- Leaders talked about thinking about our true values, as far as valuing the environment. Experts spoke about revolutionary green initiatives being implemented by power house companies such as Coca Cola, Dow Chemicals and Puma.
- Carbon capture and storage was discussed, with Zero Emissions Platform talking in depth on the C02 challenge we face. The focus was on waste reduction, recovery and recycling, as well as bettering our energy efficiency.
- The European Investment Bank ran a conversational session about how to reduce carbon footprints in business and finance.
- Siemens hosted a variety of conversations about how city infrastructure and mobility impact the environment.
- Some companies showcased examples of how sustainability can work, including a networking lounge constructed by Nedbank; the lounge, used by many speakers, representatives and VIPs, was built entirely out of sustainable building materials.
Among the other things discussed at the conference was the progress made on certain initiatives that were suggested at the 2010 conference. Reported progress included the following:
- In 2010, OPIC committed $300 million in renewable energy financing. This year they tripled their commitment to $1.1 billion.
- In 2010, the Carbon War Room announced they were creating a universal energy index for the shipping industry to use, to rank shippers by their energy use. This year they are growing and plan to add airline shipping to their tracking.
Special Recognition One aspect of the conference is to recognize those who are making great strides towards sustainable business. This is done by awarding the Gigaton Prize for contributions in the field of green. This year two prizes were awarded. The main Gigaton Prize was given to a Chinese solar company, SunTech; this company has contributed the most to reducing carbon emissions worldwide. A second Gigaton Prize was awarded to the country that has invested the most in renewable energy; this award went to Germany, a country known for their abundant eco-friendly green roofs and for current serious investments into renewable energy sources.
Moving Forward The goal of the annual World Climate Summit is to raise awareness, of course, but more so to promote action. By bringing together hundreds of industry leaders each year, the Summit promises to increase awareness and cooperation, working steadily towards a better sustainable future for business.
Home Energy Management Tools: Current Attitudes and Future Use
While Americans are becoming better educated on the need to conserve energy than ever before, we still have a ways to go in turning this awareness into action. Fortunately, modern technology is helping provide home owners with a variety of home energy management tools that can make it easier for households to track and understand their energy usage, while also making changes to their daily lifestyle and activity in an effort to make a positive change in home energy use.
Some of these tools are already gaining wide acceptance. Others are a bit slower to be picked up, and still others are in very early stages of adoption. In this article we will look at a few of these home energy management tools, and how they are making home energy management better today, reducing each American home’s impact on our environment as well as the impact of the energy bill on the home owner’s wallet.
Small Changes are Easy to Adopt There are a variety of home energy management tools that many consumers are already using, and have excellent results with. Perhaps the most common home energy management tool is the programmable thermostat. These units are inexpensive (ranging from $35 to upwards of $150, depending upon features and ease of use) and can usually be installed by a somewhat handy homeowner in less than an hour. Actually, some power companies are installing these in homes for free, recognizing their ability to save a lot of money in energy costs. How do these programmable thermostats save money?
Simply put, programmable thermostats are an easy way to set a house to a certain temperature without having to think about it on a daily basis. A homeowner can program the thermostat once to be cooler at night, warmer during the day – or vice versa – easily saving energy while keeping a home comfortable. For example, on a hot summer day they can set the air conditioning to cool the house just as they rise from bed, and to keep it cool until they leave for work. Then, the thermostat can allow the house to be warmer while everyone is at school and work, returning it to a cooler temperature just as the first person is to arrive at home.
Also available today are small devices that consumers can use to measure how much power their appliances consume. These energy measurement devices can be purchased at a variety of retailers, including Amazon, for just $20 or so. They are easy to use; you simply plug the unit into a wall outlet, then plug an appliance into the unit. The unit then tells you how much energy the appliance is using, either turned on or turned off, helping consumers make informed decisions about energy use. These are not being used much now, but as consumer awareness increases their use will likely increase as well.
Unusual Options can be Scary Recognizing that heating and cooling accounts for about half of most people’s energy use, some power companies are offering an interesting power management option that many customers are currently apprehensive to try. This is a type of timed energy management, where consumers are given a new free thermostat that helps regulate their home’s heating and cooling costs by providing the home with more energy during times that energy is less expensive and less energy during times when energy is more expensive. While these programs have potential, consumers will need to become more comfortable with the perceived lack of control before they are willing to try out this new money saving option.
Bigger Changes and Awareness are on the Horizon Some power and heating/cooling companies are working on computer technology that will allow consumers to efficiently monitor their home energy use. These tools will plug into a home, allowing the home owner to check their computer to see at a glance how much energy their home is using in various places. They can see what heating is costing, versus what cooling is costing. They can check their light costs verse hot water heater, and so on. With these future tools consumers will be able to make informed decisions on how they use their power every day.
American Consumers Go Green
As awareness of environmental issues and concern over the future rises, American consumers are rising to meet the challenge implicit in our environmental problems. According to a publication by the SC Johnson company (makers of Pledge, Ziploc, Windex and more products that many people use every day), the American public has greatly increased its understanding of environmental issues and conservation in the past 21 years. In fact, SC Johnson has published a very interesting fact sheet showing just how much consumer attitudes and behaviors have changed since 1990 (http://www.scjohnson.com/Libraries/Download_Documents/SCJ_and_GfK_Roper_Green_Gauge_Highlights.sflb.ashx). Let’s look at some highlights:
Awareness is on the Rise In 1995, only about half of all American consumers felt that they knew much about the problems in our environment. This means that 16 years ago only five out of ten people felt informed about issues such as global warming, climate change, greenhouse gasses, pollution, storm water issues and the like. In 2011 these numbers grew, with the survey finding that seven out of ten people feel that they are properly aware of the global climate and other environmental issues. This means that in 16 short years there has been a 30% increase in consumer awareness. Great news, especially if this awareness translates into a call for action.
Awareness is Not the Same as Answers Unfortunately, uncertainty still exists. The SC Johnson data finds that 48% of Americans still feel uncertain about the future of our environment. This means that nearly half of Americans simply do not know what to expect of our future. They wonder whether it will get better or worse, or simply stay the same. What of the other 52%? SC Johnson did not release that information, leaving us to wonder if people think positively or negatively about the future of our planet Earth.
We Do Seem to Have Some Opinions While nearly half of Americans do not know what the future holds, the SC Johnson survey found that today nearly three quarters of Americans believe that businesses should look at sustainable practices and products if they want to be economically competitive. In short, they agreed that manufacturers who use environmentally friendly processes, procedures and materials will do a better business in the near future than companies who do not have sustainability and greenness in mind.
We are Taking Action The SC Johnson survey further found that Americans are taking action, changing the way we have behaved since the early 1990s. In fact, according to their research in 2011 twice as many people are recycling as they were in 1990. A full 58% of Americans say that they recycle on a regular basis. But what of the other 42%? Well, obviously we all still have work to do in the way of informing people of the importance of protecting our environment. Apparently, 70% of Americans are aware of our global environmental problems, yet only 58% of Americans bother to recycle. That leaves us with 12% who know there is a problem, yet are not even a small part of the solution through simple recycling. And, it leaves us with 30% of people who are not even educated on the topic enough to understand the issues, let alone to take action.
Where the Answer Can be Found Likely, the key to driving consumer action in conservation and recycling is education. This SC Johnson study clearly shows that people who are educated are more prone to action. And, that our information age is starting to truly educate people on our environmental problems. We need to continue down this path, looking for both corporate and personal responsibility, continuing to spread the word about eco-issues and hope that this knowledge results in continued, sustained green activities.
