Using Inbound Marketing to set up your own Small Businesses "Watering Hole"

Have you ever heard of the term “Inbound Marketing”? I bet you know what “Outbound Marketing” is if I mentioned a few terms – trade shows, seminar series, email blasts to purchased lists, internal cold calling, outsourced telemarketing, and advertising.  These methods are called “outbound marketing” because a marketer or small business owner pushes their message out far and wide hoping that it resonates with that needle in the haystack. While this works in some cases, for many small businesses they don’t have the budget to experiment or invest in the size that these programs require to get a measure of success.

Inbound Marketing Defined

The concept “inbound marketing” is where you use tools like your website or blog to construct a “hub” for your business and hopefully, your industry to attract people naturally through search engines. Ways people do this is by utilizing social media tools like blogs, Twitter and Facebook Fan Pages as a start. This dramatically increases the chances you will be found by those looking for the help you provide. Companies “get found” in this way because potential customers are already learning about and shopping in your industry, therefore they are using .

Setup Your Own Small Business “Watering Hole”

A great analogy from Hubspot is the “Watering Hole Analogy“:

“The best analogy I can come up with is that traditional marketers looking to garner interest from new potential customers are like lions hunting in the jungle for elephants.  The elephants used to be in the jungle in the ’80s and ’90s when they learned their trade, but they don’t seem to be there anymore.  They have all migrated to the watering holes on the savannah (the internet).  So, rather than continuing to hunt in the jungle, I recommend setting up shop at the watering hole or turning your website into its own watering hole.”

Upcoming Inbound Marketing Series

This month the them is “Inbound Marketing for Small Business” and we will be connecting the dots and showing you the tools and best practices to set up your own “watering hole”. Stay tuned.

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Tags: Inbound Marketing
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