Inbound Marketing Blog

One of my all-time favourite song lyrics is from Bob Dylan’s classic ’The Times They Are A-changin’. In it, he sings: you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone.

I can’t think of better words to describe the pressure Australian businesses must be facing when realising the growth of the Inbound Marketing movement and their need to keep up with a rapidly changing industry. 

This month’s Inbound 2015 event should be all the evidence we need to know that the future of Inbound Marketing is very bright indeed. Actually, there’s a strong case to say that Inbound Marketing is the future of marketing.

Inbound 2015 is, by far, the most anticipated event on the marketing calendar. This year more than 14,000 delegates packed into the Boston Convention Centre to take part in a four day program bursting with keynote speakers, discussions and events dedicated to Inbound Marketing.

When I start developing buyer personas with my clients I ask them to fill in a worksheet of questions, to give me a greater insight into who we’re writing for, and why these people would be interested their product or service.

What I have come to learn over the years of creating buyer personas is that people still don’t fully understand how to tap into the important details of their buyer personas.

Is your content attracting people who are likely to buy from you? Is your content aligned with information they’re looking for at different stages of the buying process?

A challenge many small businesses face is publishing content their prospects are looking for online. Creating a buyer persona, a detailed description of someone who is likely to buy from you, will provide insight into what information your prospects are searching online.

As a small business owner you understand that digital marketing is key to achieving your revenue goals in this digital era. You understand the importance of a website presence so your future customers can find you, and that you need to give people a reason to choose you and not your competition.

September 9th, I joined 10,000+ other marketing and business professionals at the annual Inbound conference in Boston.

For most marketers the term ‘Content Marketing’ is not new. It’s an important online marketing strategy that includes: 

• Daily, social media engagements and sharing
• Weekly, publishing educational blog articles
• Monthly, producing instructional videos
• Quarterly, guides and ebooks for lead generation and thought leadership
• And of course, regular emails for lead nurturing

The impact of the internet and social media has changed the role of marketing and sales, with many strugglying to know how to effectively leverage this new online world to acheive their lead and revenue goals.

This article shares insights learned from Inbound13 on how marketing and sales must change tactics if they want to succeed in this new online world.

At Inbound13 – just last week in Boston, the keynote presentation from Hubspot co-founders @bhalligan and @dharmesh spoke about treating prospects, leads and customers like people – we’re calling this the Inbound Experience.

An inbound experience is a personalised experience that a person has with your company online. An inbound experience starts with your website, and continues with your interactions with people throughout the entire buying process, and beyond.