What is inbound marketing?

To enhance the success of your organization's marketing efforts, it’s important to understand your business’s goals and to use the right tools, like inbound marketing, to reach your target audience. But what is inbound marketing, and why is it important for business growth?

Unlike outbound marketing, which is more proactive in getting customers interested in a product, inbound marketing targets your audience with customized content attracting them to your site and increasing the conversion rate of prospects to customers. Inbound marketing enables businesses to provide meaningful and thoughtful content throughout the buying journey, in every stage of the funnel.

There are many benefits of inbound marketing, including attracting, engaging, entertaining, and educating prospects and customers, but there are many myths about HubSpot marketing. Some of the common misconceptions that people have about HubSpot inbound marketing include:

  1. Inbound Marketing = Content Marketing
  2. Inbound Marketing Takes Little Time to Manage
  3. Inbound Marketing Is All You Need
  4. Inbound Marketing Is Only Email
  5. Inbound Marketing Is Just a Fad
  6. Inbound Marketing Runs Itself
  7. Quantity > Quality
  8. Inbound Marketing Works Instantly
  9. Inbound Marketing Is Formula-Based
  10. You Don’t Need an Inbound Marketing Strategy

1. Inbound Marketing = Content Marketing

Most people equate inbound marketing to content marketing, while in reality, they are two different things. Content marketing involves creating meaningful, consistent content distributed to various defined audiences to drive prospects to profitable customers. On the other hand, inbound marketing attracts customers via meaningful content and constant engagement with customers.

In other words, inbound marketing acts as a framework for your marketing strategies, and content marketing is a part of it. Inbound marketing focuses on content and how it can be made available for customers to access it and find your site. Inbound marketing takes marketing a notch higher through SEO, surveys, chatbots, and social media listening, which provide insight into how various campaigns are performing, helping you focus more resources on the movements performing exceptionally. 

With HubSpot inbound marketing, your business has access to a range of tools that enable you to create customized content for various platforms and different target audiences. For instance, HubSpot email marketing allows you to design and share professional emails that are optimized for improved performance.

2. Inbound Marketing Takes Little Time to Manage

When integrating digital solutions into your marketing strategies, most business owners have a misinformed notion that inbound marketing is easily set up and managed. The reality is that it takes longer to see results from inbound marketing, as it builds relationships and trust with prospects over time. What’s more, the initial steps of inbound marketing can take several weeks or months to be successfully integrated, depending on the marketing readiness of the organization. These steps include setting SMART goals, developing buyer personas, establishing a content marketing strategy, building landing pages and segmented contact lists, among other initiatives.

HubSpot inbound marketing offers you a range of tools that enhance the tracking efforts through constant analysis and monitoring for changes in online customer behavior. To use all these tools effectively, the HubSpot tutorial guides a successful inbound marketing strategy integration. By increasing your activity through premium content and blogging, HubSpot research shows that you can increase the speed of inbound marketing.

3. Inbound Marketing Is All You Need

There’s no doubt that inbound marketing is an excellent solution for enhancing your company’s visibility and reaching your target audience. However, this doesn’t mean that it should be the only marketing strategy your business relies on.

As you work on your inbound marketing strategy, it’s important to engage in other relevant marketing activities such as asking for referrals, holding various educational events, and networking. A HubSpot marketing plan helps you incorporate multiple strategies together with inbound marketing to help your company boost its growth and achieve its campaign goals. 

4. Inbound Marketing Is Only Email

A common myth about inbound marketing is that it’s only email-oriented. However, this notion is misinformed, as inbound marketing also employs various unpaid avenues like content channels, social media, and search engines to foster interest. 

HubSpot email marketing enhances your inbound marketing by providing customizable templates that allow you to customize more informational and target-specific emails. Although email marketing is an essential part of your inbound marketing strategy, you should always remember that other aspects require attention for a successful marketing campaign strategy. 

Some of the factors to focus on include lead generation, social media, landing pages, and others. Inbound marketing provides a holistic approach to marketing, whereby it incorporates various strategies for a successful campaign.

5. Inbound Marketing Is Just a Fad

Some people have written off inbound marketing as a fad that a more modern digital marketing solution will soon overtake. However, most people don’t know that inbound marketing isn’t a modern concept but an evolved marketing strategy that has been around since the dawn of marketing as a concept.

The main strategy of inbound marketing focuses on providing utility and value, enhancing visibility, earning trust from customers, and increasing sales. HubSpot marketing tools and integrations enhance your inbound marketing strategy, allowing you to have control over your marketing campaigns, such as content management, sales, and customer service, among others.

6. Inbound Marketing Runs Itself

Most people usually assume that HubSpot inbound marketing will run itself once all the necessary automation and workflows have been successfully integrated. Although inbound marketing is vital for the growth of your business strategy and attaining your business goals, a lot still needs to be done to ensure all your marketing efforts are more meaningful.

Automation and workflows play an important role in reducing the time spent maintaining and managing your inbound marketing. However, it’s important to make relevant changes to your HubSpot inbound marketing strategy as your business and the marketing environment grow and evolve. 

HubSpot marketing tools enable you to supplement your inbound marketing strategy with other methods, as long as they work toward achieving set goals. It’s still critical that you familiarize yourself with the numerous HubSpot marketing tools so that you can make the necessary changes to benefit your business effectively.

7. Quantity > Quality

When it comes to inbound marketing, most people tend to think that more is always best. Although creating and sharing a lot of content may increase visibility across multiple search engines, it may compromise your ability to enhance customer engagement or build long-lasting relationships with your customers.

Instead of sharing too much content, HubSpot marketing automation provides you with the necessary tools you need to create content that speaks directly to your target audience. HubSpot inbound marketing is geared toward attracting, engaging, entertaining, and educating customers with personalized content.

HubSpot marketing automation allows you to customize content based on a range of factors to communicate directly to the target audience. This is an effective and efficient way of ensuring that you get better results, regardless of the amount of content you are putting out, and your audience will find value in it.

8. Inbound Marketing Works Instantly

Although HubSpot inbound marketing is vital for success on all your marketing campaigns, some business owners expect to see immediate results after setting up workflows and automation.

For example, in SEO, you need to constantly put out relevant and informative content so that you get a higher ranking across multiple search engines. This is the same concept when it comes to inbound marketing. Marketing teams need to dedicate their efforts to using the relevant digital marketing tools to build lasting relationships with customers and gain their trust.

This will take time, and the HubSpot marketing plan provides you with the tools needed to customize a marketing plan that suits your industry and set goals. A well-designed plan is vital for the success of the business and future marketing campaigns.

9. Inbound Marketing Is Formula-Based

As a modern digital marketing strategy, inbound marketing isn’t a static process where you rely on a particular formula for a successful marketing campaign. Inbound marketing aims to enhance visibility and build lasting and meaningful relationships with customers, which reveals the human aspect of your organization. Since you’re directly dealing with your customers, you can’t put content out without ensuring that it will communicate the right message to the desired audience.

Through HubSpot marketing automation, you have access to many tools that enable you to customize content based on the type of platform used and the type of audience. As the marketing industry constantly changes, it’s also important to adjust and make changes to your HubSpot inbound marketing for a successful campaign.

10. You Don’t Need an Inbound Marketing Strategy

If your business is used to operating in a certain way, and it has worked for you, one may feel that there’s no need for an inbound marketing strategy. Although things might be working, lacking a solid marketing plan results in costing more and consuming a lot of time in the long run. By relying on traditional or outbound marketing, you risk missing out on a better and more efficient marketing strategy.

It’s important to have a basic understanding of what an inbound marketing strategy is to integrate it into your marketing operations successfully. HubSpot integrated marketing provides your business with a well-designed marketing plan that is customized to suit your organization. It also helps you establish boundaries, guidelines, and goals for your marketing campaigns.

HubSpot inbound marketing helps you keep track of all your marketing campaigns so that they don’t get scattered and become ineffective. This usually happens for people who rely on traditional marketing strategies, which are costly and time-consuming.

Let the HubSpot Experts Help You Boost Your Inbound Marketing Strategy

There are many myths and misconceptions about inbound marketing strategy, but one fact remains true: Inbound marketing is a highly effective, scalable methodology that allows businesses to not only build brand awareness but also fosters long-term relationships with prospects and customers.

Don’t allow yourself to be fooled by all the myths out there that suggest you don’t need inbound marketing, especially with the instability of the marketing industry. If you don’t know how to get started, talk to a HubSpot inbound marketing consultant and access all the needed information. You can also get in touch with a HubSpot-certified inbound marketing agency.

Speak to an Inbound Specialist

Originally published December 8, 2021, updated December 14, 2021
Tags: HubSpot Workflows Automation Email Automation