One of the benefits of the rise of digital marketing has been the abundance of analytics. No longer do we need to rely on what people “say” they are going to do or “would do” in a certain brand scenario. With the right tools in place we can actually observe their real time behaviour. We can see how customers arrive into our sales/business process, where they spend their time and where they reach a decision point – to convert or not.
We can even go further. With a mobile and/or social layer integrated into our digital business process, we can remove barriers, accelerate the movement from one part of the sales process to the next and close the loop on the customer feedback and advocacy. Perhaps most importantly, however, the real innovation is happening in the way that the marketing funnel has been inverted. These days, it’s not about creating awareness and outreach but about creating a centre of gravity that draws your customers to your business.
But many businesses fail to grasp the opportunity. Especially in retail.
This neat infographic from the Marketo folks provides a handy snapshot for marketers, explaining how traditional and “inbound” marketing differs. And once you see the opportunity, check out the Sticky 360 degree approach. It may just be the solution you need to your inbound marketing challenges.
Hi Gavin and thanks for sharing this piece. I’m a big proponent of inbound marketing, it provides companies what I believe to be the best opportunity for business growth available today. As we (business and consumers alike) are increasingly using the web as a first choice for information gathering about the solutions we need or want, it’s critically important that business understand how their target audience is searching for their solution. There’s no doubt in my mind that the fundamental relationship and process between buyer and seller has changed from one controlled by the seller (the old paradigm of outbound marketing) to the new and evolving era of buyer controlled processes…they access the information they want and need when they want it in order to satisfy their needs and buying cycles, not the selling cycles of the vendors!
The one comment I’d like to make on this infographic that came as a bit of a surprise to me was how much text content there is. I really feel that infographics need to be that, info ‘graphics’, that is to say, minimize the text content. Marketo has a great product for the right audience, although I fully admit I favour the platform offered by http://www.hubspot.com as I think it offers more tools to the end user customer. That Marketo had an infographic created that had so much text attached to it I think is a bit of a mis-step.
For readers who are interested we recently did a post on another inbound marketing infographic, and while it doesn’t directly target the CMO audience I think it gives a better ‘graphic’ summary of inbound vs outbound marketing approaches, you can see it here: http://inboundmarketingexperts.ca/blog-0/bid/73120/Outbound-VS-Inbound-Marketing-Infographic
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and what I’ve shared here is just mine, but I’d be interested in hearing back from others on which infographic they think better conveys the value of inbound marketing, what are your thoughts?