Inbound Marketing 101 with HubSpot's Rick Burnes

Inbound marketing - the term used to describe how companies are using Google, blogs and social media to get found - is becoming an increasingly central focus of the work we do at SpeakerBox. Perhaps obviously, "inbound" marketing is the opposite of "outbound" marketing, where marketers use things like advertising, direct mail, email blasts and cold-calling prospects to reach prospects. If you think of how you personally find information on new products, services and companies, are you more likely to be receptive to material that was pushed to you, or do you rely on search results to gather information? Overwhelmingly, people are relying on the latter.

I sat down with some of my SBX colleagues last week to watch video of Rick Burnes from HubSpot from a talk he gave at an event hosted by Red Shoes PR in Appleton, WI**. Rick gave a great "Inbound Marketing 101" presentation, which I recommend every marketer or communications professional watch.

There's a lot of great stuff in the video, covering SEO, content creation, social media and measurement, but here were a couple of my favorite takeaways:

• Marketing has evolved in a way that now helps people. Today's best marketers pull people into their web site as opposed to going out and interrupting people or hitting them over the head with their message.
• Inbound marketing is significantly cheaper and more efficient than traditional outbound channels (trade shows, pay-per-click advertising), and results in higher quality leads.
• Marketing is about more than bringing people to your web site. Once you get them there, you have to offer more reason to have them stay or return, and which helps convert them to leads and then into customers.
• Focus on turning your site into a content library - the longer you are publishing articles / blog posts, the longer you'll have a huge archive of assets which will continue to pull people into your site over time through search.
• You can't just focus on one piece of inbound marketing - all of this (SEO, blogs, social media) fits together like an ecosystem, and your business has to become part of that ecosystem.
• With SEO, be specific about the words you are trying to rank for.
• When it comes to content creation (including blog writing), is quality or quantity best? The answer is BOTH! You need to produce good stuff, but also a lot of it. Write about the content that your customers are thinking about. People want to talk about the issues they are facing, not the software, products or services you are selling.
• Think of yourself as a publisher, and create content that will travel across the web and be useful to people. Above all else, be a resource on your industry!
• What kind of content should you create? Try everything, and don't be afraid to experiment. Burnes  recommends starting with a blog ("ground zero"). Your blog is where all of the content you create other places (podcasts, videos, etc.) should live.
• Host your company's blog on your company's domain! Hosting it on a site like Wordpress.com or Blogspot.com doesn't help your site with SEO.
• Free HubSpot tool Rick mentioned: website.grader.com

Rick's presentation was full of actionable advice like this. I've embedded both parts of his presentation below, and highly recommend watching both them.

-Stephanie
@stephstad





**Observant Sounding Board readers will catch that this is my 2nd consecutive post with a home state reference. Viva Wisconsin! I'll work on extending the streak...