Abstract
Social media has not only enabled us to freely express our ideas and thoughts and facilitates us with interactive communications media with friends, but also allows businesses to use it as a platform for marketing. Since social media facilitates businesses to keep in touch with their consumers at low costs while catering to their specific needs and wants in order to satisfy them. As a result, there is a trend towards inbound marketing, in which customers are persuaded to actively find useful and relevant information on products or services to suit their needs and wants. In contrast, conventional marketing is outbound marketing where businesses push marketing contents to their customers regardless of if they need such contents or not, which may annoy them. This chapter compares inbound and outbound marketing and discusses advantages of inbound marketing over outbound marketing.
TopBackground
Marketing as a topic has been thoroughly explored in literature throughout the decades (Houston, 1986; McNamara, 1972; Webster Jr, 1988). It is one of the many departments of any organisation that aims to promote products and services by advertisements, establish and improve public relations by reaching out to consumers, and enhance an organisation’s public image. Organisations have been relying upon marketing techniques such informing on televisions and radios in order to persuade consumers to purchase their products.
As technology advances, so does the literature in marketing. More studies have begun to appear regarding a new form of marketing (Erdoğmuş & Cicek, 2012; Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012: Stelzner, 2014; Zarrella, 2009). With the advent of programmable computers where information can be transferred quickly and freely, marketing has revolutionised into a new form, the digital form. Whereas the old methods include physical media that can be touched by hand, the new marketing techniques focus on the Internet as the new medium to advertise to the public.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Social Network: A network interconnecting many users on the Internet for them to communicate and socialise. Common examples of social network are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Outbound Marketing: Intrusive and interrupting in nature, it is a form of marketing where products are being advertised regardless of consumer interests and needs. Its main platform includes physical media such as newspapers, radios, and televisions, although some forms exist on the Internet as well.
Physical Medium: A platform that is not digital and can typically be touched by hand.
Deal Sites: An online retailing platform where organisations can sell their products in discounts or bundles with the purpose of promoting their own products to the public. A well-known example is Groupon.
Content Marketing: The process of exposing consumers to useful and relevant information on the Internet, especially regarding products that may benefit them.
Social media: A general term for websites that enable users to freely share information on the Internet, normally on Social Networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
Blogging: A keyword-rich personal website, where information is being freely shared to the public. Blogs are usually well-indexed by Search Engines.
Lifetime Value of Consumers (LTV): The amount of money an organisation is going to make from a customer throughout their entire life.
Inbound Marketing: A form of marketing where the Internet acts as a main platform for advertisement, but only shows relevant and useful content to consumers, and is not aggressive in nature.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): The process of maximising number of consumers on the Internet by having an organisation’s name or products high on Search Engines.