Inbound marketing is a major trend for several years now. Everyone knows about inbound. Everyone talks about it. But what do we actually know about this methodology? Why do we develop content in such amounts? Or, why do we need all those leads?
At Digitec, we often use inbound marketing both for our clients and for us. And the expectations of many people from this strategy often surprise us. Some are sure that it won’t work, others don’t believe that it requires an entire team.
Surely, there are tons of misconceptions. In this article, we’ll go over five statements we have heard about inbound marketing that are not true at all. So, let’s begin with the most common one.
Can you it on your own? Absolutely, you can! Will it give the results you need? It depends. Just be sure to take all of the risks into account.
First of all, calculate how much time you will spend on marketing and how much it will cost you. Then, try to predict whether you will be able to return that investment. A huge part of marketing is about calculations. You can find several success stories of people doing their marketing on their own and succeeding. But these stories are mostly exceptions. Why do you think all those agencies hire entire teams of marketers with narrow specializations? You don’t think they just have tons of money to waste, do you?
The thing is, one person can only cover the minimum for a marketing campaign. You have no idea how hard it is to find a person who can write a decent marketing copy. Most social media and SEO specialists know how to write right, yet very few of them can replace a professional copywriter. These are just different disciplines where deep expertise matters. A professional or unprofessional approach may go unnoticed for many people, while for others, it forms the brand image.
So you can try to invest your time in inbound marketing, but the experience of many entrepreneurs has shown that a professional team returns all investments faster. Thus, working with an agency can cost less than investing managers’ time in a new field.
Do you still want to accomplish all by yourself? Well, you are informed about your expenses in the form of time and the professionalism that takes even more time to achieve.
Now let’s go back to the free part. Inbound marketing (any type of digital marketing, actually) requires various software solutions. Most of these solutions, especially the most effective options, are paid and not always cheap. On the other hand, since agencies buy those solutions for a number of clients, it often costs them less. So they sell it for less or include the software services in the package. Let’s say your company is buying a limited plan of X software for 10 dollars. Meanwhile, an agency buys an unlimited plan for $50 but uses it for 10 or more clients. Long story short, you can regard this as wholesale. You’ll buy a lot of software anyway. In most cases, an agency pays less for the software and includes the prices in the whole package of marketing services.
In any case, you’re going to pay. And though some agencies charge more for each additional software solution, others make it more cost-effective.
No, you won’t. This misconception is a side effect of poorly implemented marketing activities. Doing it right, you will only have to give people the information they have asked for. The entire methodology of inbound marketing is based on not being intrusive. You offer people answers to their searches. Then, you send them emails based on their subscriptions or answer their direct questions.
Moreover, even if you want to spam, you better not. More and more state and international regulations restrict the unwanted contact between marketers and customers/leads/prospects. They require full consent from the user to receive any information from you. Otherwise, you will face massive fines and bans. So you need a smart strategy to give as much information as necessary, get lots of feedbacks and avoid any intrusive approach.
Some say that SaaS (software as a service) marketers are the pioneers of inbound marketing. The concept of inbound marketing is way older than its term, so it’s hard to track the origins. Meanwhile, it’s true that the inbound methodology has been taken more seriously and studied more profoundly due to software marketers.
See, if you are going to invest a lot in inbound marketing, better use it for more expensive products. But this is an entire methodology, and you have countless ways to use it. Done wisely, inbound marketing will work great both for fast moving consumer goods, a new restaurant, and printing hardware. At Digitec, we will advise you whether you need this method of marketing or not. We are here to plan the whole concept and strategy within a reasonable budget.
Inbound marketing does optimize your search results and rankings. But, no, it does not replace SEO. In fact, inbound marketing combines several processes such as content creation, social media management, search engine optimization and many more. We need SEO to help people who need us find us. Besides, inbound is a methodology, and it’s not fair to compare or replace a process with a methodology. They are different and they complete each other.
Now that you have read the article, do you have any questions left? Have you decided whether you want inbound marketing or any other approach? At Digitec, we combine all the necessary activities and get the best solution for you. Contact us to learn more.
Ani Barseghyan
Armenuhi Ivanyan