It’s still marketing, Jim, but not as we know it…

The Internet turned Marketing up-side-down!

The Internet has changed the marketing landscape or more accurately, business and consumer shoppers, have changed it and turned internet marketing up-side-down! Regardless of where you are located, in Edinburgh or anywhere else for that matter, how marketing is done will never be the same again. The internet has made sure of that!

What’s made the difference?

Brian Halligan , co-founder of the recognised marketing automation company, HubSpot, coined the phrase Inbound Marketing back in 2006 and since it has replaced the term internet marketing and become the most effective method of building your business online. The principles and concepts behind internet marketing have not changed only how they are practiced.

Inbound Marketing v Traditional Marketing (outbound marketing)

The main difference is that your potential customers now actively search and seek out who they think can satisfy their needs. Inbound marketing uses the power and the platforms available on the internet to attact, satisfy and convert searchers into your customers.

Traditional Marketing

Traditional marketing (outbound) was effectively a broadcast medium and primarily based on who could shout the loudest and catch the attention of the often uninterested passer-by. Be that by the press, magazine and billboard advertising, direct mail, yellow pages or other forms of interruption marketing.

Interruption Broadcast Marketing

Success of this outbound marketing approach was often based on who simply had the biggest marketing budgets and able to out-buy their competition. That often left the small, new or innovative company at a disadvantage picking up the crumbs from around the periphery.

Inbound Marketing (Internet Marketing) has brought changes

The power of Inbound Marketing Search (seo), social media (twitter, facebook, pinterest, foursquare, google+ etc), video (youtube, vimeo), blogs all offer the online marketer, large or small, invaluable opportunities to find, communicate and engage with their potential customers. Instead of traditional marketing (outbound methods) of buying advertising, email lists and other methods of finding leads, inbound marketing is based on creating quality content that answers the questions that searchers are asking when they perform an online search.

By ensuring the content you publish matches, addresses your potential customer’s interests and answers their search questions you are able to attract inbound traffic to your website. Most, if not all inbound marketing, seeks to find, interest, satisfy and then convert those visitors into paying and profitable customers and it is only on your own website that you have total control over that process.

What questions to answer?

Our keyword research/monitoring highlighted that the term internet marketing edinburgh as one being searched for, where web-media.co.uk was being listed in high enough volumes but not in a high enough search ranking position to be useful in terms of attracting any interest or clickthroughs.

Creating some content around the term and in this case explaining how the internet has changed the way marketing online is done was believed to be a useful way to increase its serp (search engine results page) position and visibility. If, as you might have done, and searched for the term internet marketing edinburgh and reading this post, it is an example of the first stage in the above process of attracting visitors through publishing a blog post about a topic of interest being searched for by possible clients.

Where to find your long-tail keyword phrases

Your own Google Analytics when linked with your Webmaster Tools account is a good starting place to mine your keyword data and find some of the long-tail keyword phrases generating impressions and offering opportunity to improve search rankings. Hopefully, it has given some insight into how marketing in the internet age has changed and the options now available to drive traffic to your web site. Interested in taking it to the next step and attracting more visitors to your own site, give us a call on 01324 808124 or fill in the little form at the top of the page and get your website working harder and generating more leads.