Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs, by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah
If you want a good primer on how to get found online, or as Alltop’s Guy Kawasaki says in the book’s endorsements, “if you have more brains than money” for your marketing strategy, then Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs, by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, is well worth a read. Here, learn how to transform your static web site, more like the megaphone—a one-to-many broadcast tool—instead into a magnetic hub for your industry that pulls people in
(p. 11 & 13).
About the Authors
Halligan and Shah are the co-founders of HubSpot, an inbound marketing software company in Cambridge, MA. In the book’s opening, David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR, calls them “marketing visionaries who have helped millions of people get found online…Today, millions of people are being found online more often than they used to be because of Brian and Dharmesh’s incredibly popular tools and pioneering ideas, like [the free] HubSpot Website Grader” (p. xv).
What is Inbound Marketing?
According to the authors, inbound marketing leads are “sixty-one percent less expensive than outbound marketing leads” (p. 163) and are developed following this process:
…you need to create remarkable content, optimize that content (for search engines, RSS readers, and social media sites), publish the content, market the content through the blogosphere and social medisphere, and measure what is working and what is not working (p. 32).
To Halligan and Shah, the inbound marketer is thus “half traditional marketer and half content creation factory” (p. 30), who “changes the mode of your web site from a one-way sales message to a collaborative, living, breathing hub for your marketplace” (p. 12).
Examples of inbound marketing include “content that you can produce rapidly and that people can effectively spread online ” (p. 30), such as blog articles, white papers, videos, webinars, podcasts, and webcasts (p. 31).
How the Book Is Organized
The book is organized in four parts:
- Part One: Inbound Marketing ~ This part describes the paradigm shift away from interruption-based outbound marketing techniques, including trade shows, telemarketing, e-mail blasting, and advertising, to more successful inbound marketing techniques, such as using blogs, Google, and social media.
- Part Two: Get Found by Prospects ~ This part describes how creating remarkable content is the foundation for getting found online. It provides tips for ensuring that your content gets found in the blogosphere, Google, and social media.
- Part Three: Converting Customers ~ Chapter 8 explains that “the true power of inbound marketing lies in its ability to not only stretch the top of your sales funnel (and pull more people in), but also to stretch the middle (get more to convert)” (p. 129). Chapters 8, 9, and 10 provide lots of good advice on converting visitors into leads, prospects into leads, and leads to customers.
- Part Four: Make Better Decisions ~ Chapter 11 outlines how to develop the levels (prospect, lead, opportunity, and customer), in an effective sales funnel, and how to measure the size of each level on a quarterly (or monthly) basis (p. 165). “Once you have the size of each level, you can measure the conversion rate between each phase plus the total yield of the funnel—the percent of prospects that turn into customers” (p. 165). Subsequent chapters describe how to make better hiring decisions and offers various ways to watch your competition online.
Recommendation
Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs would have been perfect for me, when I was just starting out blogging and setting up a Twitter account, or when I was reviewing for the inbound marketing certification exam, sponsored by HubSpot, at Inbound Marketing University. Even as someone now more familiar with many of the book’s broader principles, there were still many helpful sections that were new to me, such as a the discussion on the differences between Digg and StumbleUpon users, the suggestions on how to get found in YouTube, and the steps for creating advanced queries in Google Search.
Today, this is one of the first books I would turn to, if I were trying to convince the boss of social media’s value, or if I were instructing others, on how to set up various social media accounts.
The writing style is very readable, and the “Inbound In Action” examples at the end of each chapter illustrate the principles in such a compact, and often quite memorable way. The numerous checklists and To Do Lists are detailed and action-oriented, providing the perfect formula for getting started and staying organized.
I especially liked Part Three on Converting Customers, as it treats the part of inbound marketing that is the most important, and which at least in my other social media travels, does not always get as much attention as it should. I also liked that each chapter includes a section on “Tracking Your Progress,” and the focus on measurability throughout the book.
One Caveat: Technical Writers Are Content Creators, Too
I disagree with the book’s recommendation not to consider writers of technical manuals for inbound marketing work.
Your next marketing hire, therefore, should be someone with great writing skills, preferably an existing journalist looking to make a career change, rather than a technical writer of manuals
(p. 174 ).
Possibly, the authors are not aware of the high number of professional technical writers who have creative backgrounds in communications, journalism, English, and usability, as well as marketing experience, especially in smaller shops where they frequently wear both technical writing and marketing writing hats. Technical writers also often have multimedia skills, Web experience, teaching backgrounds, and technical aptitude, which in general transfer well to how-to videos, instructional e-books, SEO, and working with IT departments.
(For a more complete discussion on ways technical writers can contribute in a Web 2.0 world, check out Anne Gentle’s Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, which is geared not only for marketers, but for “technical development, support, [and] that most intriguing new job description—community manager” (p. 2).)
Final Thoughts
Despite my one caveat, I recommend Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (which became the #1 marketing book this weekend), as a good way to come up to speed quickly on social media, SEO, and the highly effective method of attracting customers to your web site, known as inbound marketing. I also recommend the excellent content at HubSpot’s blog, which illustrates all the book’s principles, as well as taking a swing-by InboundMarketing.com, which complements the book, with forums, a service directory, marketing news, and jobs.
My favorite chapter was Chapter 15, “On Commitment, Patience, and Learning” which echoes the authors’ earlier advice about social media, and pragmatic tone of encouragement, throughout the book:
…social media is a long road and a way of doing business; it’s not a campaign. It needs long-term funding, support, and organizational commitment. The results will not be easy to tie to direct outcomes (read: sales), but the impact of a community that is well-nurtured grows exponentially
(p. 123).
From the “Watching Your Competition” chapter, here is my favorite quotation:
The Web is a flattener of all marketplaces—it is the ultimate meritocracy. Because the Web makes it so much more efficient to spread ideas, it poses a great opportunity for upstarts with unique products or services (p. 189).
And what if you don’t have a unique product or service? Then, “re-think your strategy to get narrower or innovate across alternatives” (p. 26), Halligan and Shah advise.
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Totally agree with your comment about Tech writers. Having been a tech writer myself, who is now ensconced in all things inbound marketing, I can say that statement seemed like a generalization and a bit of a slap in the face (as much as I “heart” HubSpot). I think there also needs to be a consideration for the target audience. To me, a tech writer with exposure to marcom is a great fit for a client offering tech-related products and services with a very tech savvy audience. In many cases, it can be easier for a tech writer to adapt to marketing than it is for a journalist without a technical DNA to adapt to writing for a technical audience.
Thanks for dropping by, Randy. For me, the comment was the one disappointment, in an otherwise faultless book, which I believe whole-heartedly outlines the path to online success. The comment highlights the larger problem of collaboration in the enterprise, between technical and nontechnical disciplines. Technical writers don’t neatly fit in either category, and if we get lost in the shuffle sometimes, it’s often for the same reason our customers do.