Conventional marketing no longer makes sense. Ads are costly and people are paying less attention to traditional media. Most marketers seek a young market (ages 18-34), but few youthful consumers read extensively. Many viewers record or stream TV shows and avoid commercials. A lot of today’s worthiest promotion happens online. But just shifting to blasting people with ads over the Internet is a backward marketing strategy. Now you need to direct your marketing so that people will look for you online. In their book, web-marketing experts Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah show how to reach out to your market through web pages, blogs, podcasts and social networks. Halligan and Shah demonstrate that commercial success depends on developing and producing quality content online. getAbstract recommends this eye-opening report to businesses large and small, established and brand new.
A New Marketing Paradigm
“Stop wasting money blasting the world with marketing messages that nobody cares about.” With the right know-how, savvy small companies and startups, and even individuals, can have as compelling a presence online as giant firms. Unlike traditional marketing, web-based promotions can provide valuable expert information that people actively seek. Organize your online content so customers who want your product or service will find you and happily buy what you’re selling. This “inbound marketing” approach is 360o different from the traditional “outbound marketing” approach.
Consumers now take active steps to avoid commercial messages. This includes using spam filters to weed out unwanted emails, DVRs to fast-forward past commercials and satellite radio to avoid on-air spots, just to name a few. Plus, consumers entertain themselves with MP3 players and downloaded music, so they have little time for standardized broadcasting. Additionally, trade publications, once a popular venue for advertisers, are losing circulation and being squeezed by freebie blogs.
It’s All Happening Online
Advertising once supplied the information people need...
Brian Halligan, CEO, and Dharmesh Shah, CTO, cofounded HubSpot, a marketing software firm. Halligan lectures at MIT and the Harvard Business School. Shah created the blog OnStartups.
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