Why the Inbound Methodology Shapes Modern Marketing

While there are many aspects of inbound methodology that makes it both innovative and effective, perhaps the most striking – and certainly the most interesting – is that it’s actually a far “truer” kind of marketing, than what we’ve been calling marketing for the last few decades.

Marketing: It’s All About Engagement (And Always Will Be)

It’s like this: The fundamental concept of marketing has always been about engaging customers, establishing value, building trust, and progressively ushering them into a dialogue. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about the classic “4Ps” of marketing (place, price, product and promotion), or we’re referring to a more recent definition or more sophisticated model. The fact remains that marketing has been, is now, and always will be about creating and fostering a mutually beneficial dialogue.

When Marketing and Sales Collide…

However, a strange thing happened somewhere along the way: marketing became confused with sales. That is, instead of laying the groundwork and delivering qualified leads to sales, marketing became an extension of sales. And that was really bad news.

Why? Because many customers who weren’t yet ready to buy, were nevertheless thrust towards sales professionals who (as can be expected) were focused on selling. In other words: the marketing dialogue was circumvented. And without that dialogue, marketing itself lost its primary function and purpose.

The Marketing Tragedy: Everyone Loses

What makes this story even more tragic, is that NOBODY benefited from this change. Customers found sales professionals (and by extension, the companies they worked for) aggressive and intimidating – and often fled the scene as quickly as possible. And sales professionals were being pushed harder and harder by their managers to “make their numbers” – even though the customers they were meeting, calling and emailing weren’t legitimate Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs).

It was a terrible situation, and one that threatened to get even worse as customers began to dread the sales process (think of the traditional dealer showroom car buying experience), sales professionals began to re-think their career path, and business owners all over the place started to panic. And that’s when inbound marketing arrived on the scene – and restored harmony and order to the marketing universe.

Inbound Methodology: Back to the Future

That’s because the inbound methodology is rooted in the TRUE definition of marketing, which is to prepare and prime customers by building trust, offering value, and usher them forward – not in an aggressive way, but in an agreeable one.

What’s more – and this aspect of inbound methodology is invaluable – much of the process can be automated, which makes it ideal for small and mid-sized businesses that don’t have big marketing budgets.

The same goes for tracking: instead of hiring a team of hard core analytics geeks, smaller businesses can access reports on everything from lead generation sources, to A/B split testing results, and more. In the past, this was impossible. But with inbound methodology and the array of tools that it has inspired, it’s remarkably easy. In fact, it’s fun, too.

The Bottom Line

Marketing and sales are partners who share a unified purpose: to help customers solve problems and achieve goals. For many years, marketing wasn’t allowed to be a “good partner” – and everyone lost as a result; including customers (who often paid money just to AVOID the sales process).

But now thanks to inbound methodology, marketing is back where it needs to be: working in alignment with sales to turn curious customers into delighted brand ambassadors.