“Ten years ago, your marketing effectiveness was a function of the width of your wallet. Today, your marketing effectiveness is a function of the width of your brain.”
– Brian Halligan CEO of Hubspot
This is one of lines from Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs that really stuck with me the whole way through.
There are so many publishing methods available these days that empower small and large businesses alike to command a level of online reach that was previously unattainable to people without the deep pockets to advertise and plaster their messages anywhere and everywhere they saw fit.
This excellent book is aimed at the 99% of the business world who are confused and unsure of what to do with the world of Twitter, Facebook, and Google that they find themselves living in today. It’s aimed at plumbers, photographers, health care organizations and manufacturing company executives – large corporations and small businesses alike who are relatively unaware that their working lives are about to change, or have already started to change in confusing ways and have no idea what to do or how to benefit from it.
Inbound Marketing describes how “old marketing” is dead or dying.
The days where simply pumping money into print or radio advertising guaranteed success are fading faster by the day. Instead, you need to engage your customers and provide them reasons to come to visit your web site. The idea is to turn your web site into a hub, stuffed with relevant, remarkable blog posts, videos and interviews. This method of compiling lots of expertise-based information that helps support your business position will only serve to generate an outstanding amount of upward traction and mobility for you in your search engine rankings as well as bringing you the high quality lead generating traffic you crave.
This book has a wonderful emphasis on hands-on advice.
Not only is it inspirational, but it’s also packed with practical wisdom. It talks about the power of Twitter, and then gives you advice on how to choose a Twitter handle. It talks about the rise of the superstar blogger and the death of the press release, and then it talks about how to decide whether you need a PR agency and, if you do, how you should hire one (like us here at FirstTracks Marketing of course). It stresses that your employees will need to learn new skills if they are to survive in this new world, and then it talks about what those skills are; what steps your employees need to take to get them; and how you can track how they’re doing. Each chapter contains a valuable checklist of things you should do, right now, to start improving your inbound marketing.
So how will you evolve your marketing tactics in 2010?
I am personally VERY excited about all the great new ideas I got from reading this book and am really looking forward to implementing some new content strategies and tools to help build hubs for our current clients. If you’re interested in learning more about how we can help get you set up with the right tools for Inbound Marketing give us a call at 603-924-1978 or fill out our contact form.
