Right now I’m working on comparing online vs. offline strategies (digital vs. traditional) for recruitment. It’s fascinating stuff and the more I dig into it, the more I see that it’s really all about Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing. Let me explain before you scroll down and see the awesome infographic I found on Mashable.
How did you find a job 10 years ago? I think it would be safe to bet that you read a classified ad in the newspaper or heard about it from a friend and applied. In these two cases we’re talking about traditional ‘post and pray that someone answers your ad’ and word of mouth marketing. While word of mouth is still around and more popular for recruitment than ever, especially with the introduction of social media, that whole post and pray thing is quickly disappearing. Just take a look at tomorrow’s newspaper and you’ll see that what was once a pages of job postings has shrunk to a page or two.
Paying to reach your audience through advertising is push marketing, or better known as Outbound Marketing. Sure it still works but people see more than 4,500 ads a day so how effective is it really?
With the digital age here and too many social sites to keep track of, this is the age of Inbound Marketing.
From Wikipedia:
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers. This sense is related to relationship marketing and Seth Godin‘s idea ofpermission marketing. David Meerman Scott recommends[3] that marketers “earn their way in” (via publishing helpful information on a blog etc.) in contrast to outbound marketing where they used to have to “buy, beg, or bug their way in” (via paid advertisements, issuing press releases in the hope they get picked up by the trade press, or paying commissioned sales people, respectively). Brian Halligan, cofounder and CEO of HubSpot, claims[4] he coined the usage of the term in this sense.
In my humble opinion, Inbound Marketing is about spending more time then money to build relationships with your customers, users, etc. It’s about customer service and telling a story before they’ve bought your product or used your service. It’s about your brand and what it truly stands for, not what you wrote in your ad copy.
Is Inbound Marketing cheaper? Absolutely not. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if an Inbound Marketing strategy took longer and was more expensive to implement than the traditional strategy. However, do we really have a choice?
Companies like Best Buy have gone above and beyond to suport their customers using Twitter, there are more customer forums these days than ever before and new community manager postions (modern day Public Relations) are being created everywhere you go.
Inbound Marketing is about creating a long term relationship and emotional connection with your customer or user. It’s about knowing that you’ve put the time in to building that relationship so that you don’t have to worry about them not buying your product or service and moving on to your competitor.
Building a long term relationship takes time, resources and most important of all, a well thought out strategy. This is not something you want to leave up to the viral internet gods and hope people want to come talk to you. This is a commitment and for all those small, medium and or large business out there, it’s a commitment you don’t want to overlook.
