We're living a revolution!
We're living an ongoing revolution in the way people communicate. How did a relatively unknown, young, single-term black senator with funny ears and a funnier name get elected President of the United States, not once but twice? Simple: He and his team understood the revolution and harnessed the power of the web to communicate effectively with the masses. They built an online following of tens of millions and raised half a billion dollars, much of it from small donations on the web.
We're living a revolution in the way people find products and choose companies to do business with. These days, practically everyone turns to the web first when researching anything—from the best baby stroller to buy to which corporate accounting firm to hire for your business. We start at Google or another search engine and we tap our online network of friends, family members, and colleagues via online tools like e-mail, instant messaging, Skype, Facebook, and Twitter.
We're living a revolution where the companies that attract our attention are not the ones with big budgets and glitzy TV ads. Now we pay attention to the ones with great web content, like Quark Expeditions, a polar travel outfitter that uses content people find via search engine to fill expedition ships while the competition relies on expensive advertising and direct mail. When I wanted to travel to Antarctica, I found Quark Expeditions online and booked my journey.
Clearly, a great web presence is critical for any business. Inbound marketing is at the forefront of the revolution.
And with revolution comes liberation!
We're liberated from the tyranny of marketing effectiveness being determined by the size of our wallets. Today, anyone with a story to tell can command an audience—and customers—on the web. Your potential customers are looking for products and services like yours right now, today, this minute.
We're liberated from the tyranny of having to interrupt people's daily lives to try to market to them. Rather than grasping for buyers' attention with expensive ad campaigns, now we can publish engaging and useful information on the web and deliver it exactly when people are interested. People land on our virtual doorstep. This is a dream come true!
We're liberated from the tyranny of always relying on mainstream media to get our information into the marketplace. Now we can tell our story directly. And the best part is that when you tell the story well, you'll get found by people who are eager to do business with you.
Inbound marketing is about getting found online, through search engines and on social networking sites that billions of people use to find answers each day.
We've come a long way since the first edition of Inbound Marketing was released in 2009. You'll read about updated strategies for success in these pages. The tools of inbound marketing are constantly evolving, and new ways to communicate have been launched such as Instagram, Foursquare, and Google+. Consider these remarkable stats: In 2009, Twitter had 18 million users, and now it has 241 million; Facebook has grown during the same time from 150 million mostly student users to 1.3 billion people around the world. Mobile has exploded in importance with 6.8 billion mobile phone subscriptions on a planet of 7 billion people! It's never been easier to reach buyers on the web.
While the strategies of inbound marketing are similar to those in the first edition of this book, Brian and Dharmesh have completely updated the tactics for our new environment.
Oh, and one more thing that's gotten better in the past five years: Marketing is more fun than ever! When was the last time you got excited about buying yet another contact list of people you could interrupt? Never, right? Creating content and engaging with buyers on social networks is empowering. Inbound marketing is fun, and with it comes a more rewarding way to live.
But as in every revolution, the rules have changed. If you're like me and you've grown up with a traditional marketing education that focused on the “four P's,” then you've got to unlearn what you have learned. If you have an MBA, or you've trained on the job, then you've got to unlearn what you have learned. You need to forget what worked in the past, in the offline world, before the revolution. You need to pick up some new skills.
Fortunately, we've got Brian and Dharmesh to show us the way. These guys are marketing visionaries who have helped millions of people get found online. Really. Today, millions of people are being found more often than they used to be because of Brian and Dharmesh's incredibly popular tools and pioneering ideas, like HubSpot Website Grader. And now they've collected all their years of experience into this book.
In these pages, you'll find marketing strategy and wisdom. But even more important, you'll find hundreds of practical and accessible ideas, tools, and techniques that you can apply to your business right now. Inbound Marketing is written by experts steeped in the realities of successful marketing, not academics who talk up the latest theory.
The great thing about inbound marketing is that anyone can do it. Including you. Especially you. It doesn't require a lot of money, but it does require an investment of your time and creativity.
What are you waiting for?
Continue reading to join the revolution, become liberated, have fun, and get found by your customers!
—David Meerman Scott
Best-selling author of
The New Rules of Marketing & PR
www.WebInkNow.com
twitter.com/dmscott