Tuesday, April 17, 2018


This is my first post on this blog. And I am excited to begin the journey!! 

Recently I completed Hubspot Inbound Certification Course. As the inbound marketing practice has been implemented in my organisation, my day to day work involves around creating and executing inbound marketing. Since I have the work experience in inbound marketing and have also recently done the certification, thought this blogpost must focus on something I am really passionate about and advocate a lot - Inbound Marketing!

There are ample posts and information about Inbound Marketing on the internet. So I thought it will be a good idea to start with basic questions like where can it be applied? How can it be applied? and a very frequently asked questions when Entrepreneur decides to take a look at it from his/her own business perspective. Please look at this post from Inbound Marketing in Indian Market context.

Q : I have a restaurant in the middle of the city and I am getting walk in customers to my restaurant. Do I need any inbound marketing? Why inbound marketing?

A : In my opinion, inbound marketing is nothing but a documented effort towards generating leads in the world of ever changing technology that has led to lifestyle change for the end customer. In other words, you are looking at the different ways to reach out to your customer in an organised manner. Simply put, Inbound Marketing is to Document whom you would like to target, decide how you need to reach out to them and use technology to target them. There are many other aspects too to it but lets stick to this basic aspect to begin with. 
Coming back to the question, if you want to increase the walk in customers to your restaurant, establish your name in the market and generate word of mouth about your restaurant in the industry then yes - Inbound marketing will help you do exactly that!! 
Irrespective of which business you are into, building an inbound marketing strategy helps. Let that business be a manufacturing business, food and beverages chain or a small coaching class getting run in a small area of the city. Your inbound strategy will help you decide where to focus, how to go for it and how to earn trust of your customers. Again, inbound helps you make changes time and again to keep doing iterations, introspections and come up with better version of your strategy. 

Q. I have a small business and I wish to promote it through Social Media. Can Inbound Marketing help me?

A. Yes, of course! In fact if you are creating a page on Facebook, Twitter and wish to start generating leads through it then Inbound Marketing Strategy is your first destination to get there. Simply having a facebook page, twitter account or any other social media presence would not help. You need to know whom you would like to reach out to, how to utilise these channels (like social media) to generate leads and once leads are generated, how to use them to generate business. 
Just creating a social media page will not help unless it has been put to work in the right direction towards a specified goal. 

Q. Inbound Marketing is not for small businesses. Only the companies having a good turnover can be benefited from an inbound marketing. 
A. Thats a wrong perception. Inbound marketing has nothing to do with the turnover of your company. It is all about how you define your end customers in terms of their behaviour, what keeps them awake at night (and much more) , channels through which you decide to reach out to them, how you would like to keep them delighted and at the same time get more business from existing customer base. As long as your business has a need to acquire new customer and up sell with existing ones, inbound marketing is your best bet!

Q. What is the difference between inbound marketing and traditional marketing? After all we do happen to have our Marketing Plan that documents strategy, planning and execution. Is Inbound Marketing anyway different than this?

A. Inbound Marketing is much more than the Marketing Plan, much more than strategy, planning and execution. It is about defining your area of expertise and the boundaries, establishing your brand, creating the happy customers and perform introspection to know what more/better is needed to serve your customers better. In inbound marketing, as it is rightly stated - you don't need to go behind the customers to generate the business. In this case you need to be there around and when the customer needs your help, he will reach out to you. 

Q. Is Inbound Marketing another way of creating and managing website?

A. Creating and managing website if one aspect of inbound marketing but it is really way more than just website. 

Q. How do I generate leads via Facebook, Linkedin or/and Website? 

A. Having just FB page or website wouldn't work unless you put that into work for you. Inbound Marketing helps you decide which channels to be used and how to put these channels to work for you. Just having thousands of clicks to the webpage wouldn't work unless they are not generating leads. Likewise, you need a strategy and planning in place which is available in inbound marketing. 

Alright now that Inbound Marketing FAQs are answered, learn more about it through the #Hubspot certification here.

If you are willing to give Inbound Marketing Strategy a chance but not aware of how to go about it - please feel free to reach out to me. I will be glad to help you at no cost consultation!! 



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very educative.