What is Inbound Marketing? Why does Inbound Marketing matter to you and your Local Business?

Marketing Local Business online is where qualified customers are looking for you.

Elsewhere, we discussed What Is Internet Marketing? itself:

“… a Marketing Relationship is a specific conversation between Business and a market. Therefore, Internet and Online Marketing are relationships between Business and customers and prospects that take place in the New Media of today, and New Media of the future.”

How have new customers found you in recent months? Today, people find out about your Local Business in two main ways:

* Passing Word-of-Mouth recommendations, or
* Finding you on a search engine results page

Word-of-Mouth depends on the good will of existing customers. How would you like people publishing Word-of-Mouth recommendations online? Why not spend zero dollars marketing your Local Business? What is Outbound Marketing? In traditional outbound marketing, companies focus on finding customers through building brand awareness, advertising, and promotion. Outbound Marketing includes:

* Focus on your product and/or service, which is your advertising & promotions,
* Focus on your sales transaction,
* Focus on your business ala public and media relations,
* Focus on your post-sales support and customer service, and
* Focus on your customer after-the-fact to measure customer satisfaction.

Everyday, a typical consumer is overwhelmed with over 2,000 outbound marketing interruptions! They have become quite creative in blocking these interruptions, including caller id, spam filtering, Tivo, and satellite radio. Customers need to find a very good reason to visit your Local Business. Marketing Local Business online is quite a challenge!

What is Permission Marketing?

Alternatives Cialis Professional to intrusive and increasingly ineffective outbound marketing are based on what Seth Godin calls Permission Marketing:

“Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them …”
“It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention.”

For the business to engage the prospect, the prospective customer must grant either:

* Explicit Permission (e.g., request email or catalog), or
* Implicit Permission (e.g., follow a search engine result link)

Furthermore, Godin says:

“In order to get permission, you make a promise. You say, ‘I will do x, y and z, I hope you will give me permission by listening.’ And then, this is the hard part, that’s all you do. You don’t assume you can do more.”

What is Inbound Marketing? Google reports more than 1 Billion searches each month for local products and local services. Fully qualified prospects are already looking for products and services in your industry. Inbound Marketing is when customers call you to:

* Make appointments,
* Purchase products, or
* Gain information

When customers find you and like you, you can get business from them, from their friends and from their family.

“Home delivery is the milkman’s revenge … it’s No prescription cialis the essence of permission,” Godin says.

Online Marketing is starting to make more sense …

Look for further conversations and Brilliant Ideas About Internet and Money — Marketing your Local Business online facilitates eager buyers finding your Local Business and contacting you. They ask to buy from you. Will you be surprised to find a mob of eager buyers ready to buy and looking for exactly what you offer?

Author Bio: Mike Schleif formed MDS Resource in 1990 to guide local business to the onramp of the Internet. Marketing local business online is his passion. As a consultant he’s recognized & requested by some of the most well known companies in the world: AT&T, IBM, Target. He grew up in a simpler time, a long ago time when computers consumed enormous rooms, ran off paper tape & stored data on large tape reels. http://mdsresource.net

Category: Business/Advertising
Keywords: inbound marketing,Internet marketing,marketing local business online,search engine marketing,online marketing,permission marketing,local business marketing