Inbound Marketing describes the practice of bringing warm, qualified leads into a business’ sales funnel rather than reaching outward to cold, questionable targets through traditional marketing means. Inbound Marketing is becoming more popular as businesses look for efficient and affordable ways to acquire new business leads. Even without the marketing budgets of their larger corporate competitors, small to medium sized businesses can successfully compete by embracing the techniques of Inbound Marketing.

Outbound Marketing includes old school methods such as cold calls, mass mail outs, print ads, attending tradeshows, TV advertising and the like. Outbound marketing is largely a numbers game and to get a product or service in front of as many cold leads as possible and entice them up to the point where they decide to buy. Ok if you’ve got the budget to get a TV ad produced and buy expensive air time. These methods have there place but with consumers becoming more cynical towards traditional forms of advertising, Outbound Marketing is becoming less efficient with businesses wasting time appealing to tons of people who have no interest in their offering. People are more in control of what information they receive and how. Channel surfing, SPAM filters, use of caller id, no junk mail lists are all ways that increasingly time poor consumers are more and more screening out the unwanted distractions of Outbound Marketing.

 Rather than interrupting people to get their attention, Inbound Marketing relies on the principle that the customers with the highest sales conversion potential are those that find and come to you. The most important part of a successful Inbound Marketing strategy is creating quality website content that will bring people into your sales process. By creating great content, you'll rise in internet search results, create linkable content, and educate your audience. All of these outcomes will help you bring in warm leads that have been pre-qualified as interested in your product or service by searching terms relevant terms or by reading similar content that links to you. Successful Inbound Marketing requires that a business has a website optimized to close leads into deals and engages visitors once they "land" on your website.

The creation of a blog is another essential technique in exploiting the benefits of Inbound Marketing. In addition to blogging, there are many other forms of great content to create that will bring interested visitors. Use of social media, hosting webinars, offering free or low cost e-books for download, and developing microsites are other methods to attract leads that are interested in a company’s particular offerings and more eager to engage in a conversation.

So the philosophy of Inbound Marketing is to focus marketing effort on filling your sales funnel with pre-qualified leads that discover your company. In that way the message about a product or service is greeted by welcoming ears rather than random outbound contacts.

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