Over the past two years, we have seen a trend of HUGE migration of users from social media to messaging apps. Facebook’s acquisition of What’sapp (just as an example) proves that the social media giants have long seen this trend coming and are doing what they must to ensure they remain at the forefront of the monetisation of digital and mobile marketing.
As technology, pop culture and commerce continue to grow at different paces, it is important to look toward the future and try to understand how these trends can and will affect your current marketing structure.
This year, Smart Insights initiated a poll which received more than 1,500 answers. The point of the poll was to find out which digital marketing techniques will make the biggest difference to businesses in 2016. The results are a bit surprising, at least to me.
*source: Smart Insights
Looking at the results, it would lead one to believe that mobile and social marketing are somewhat of an afterthought. However, I think this gets directly to the point. You see, Inbound marketing is more than just blogging and calls-to-action. In order to move forward, this must be understood. Too often we look at Inbound marketing as simply a piece of the marketing pie. We say things like, “How much of your marketing budget will you allocate to Inbound this year?” We can sometimes segment it from Mobile and other advertising channels as though they are at odds with one another, fighting for marketing budget allocation. If Inbound marketing were simply a piece of the pie would we not see it listed in the chart above? The reason for this is simple. Inbound marketing works together with all your other digital marketing initiatives.
Inbound doesn’t fit into the “mobile migration,” it pulls mobile advertising under its wing and teaches it how to fly.
So What’s the Point?
If you are doing Inbound marketing correctly, it should encompass EVERY channel of your marketing plan. Check out this infographic, also from Smart Insights.
*source Smart Insights
It highlights 30 categories of marketing technology and ranks the top 5 tools for each. What I find most fascinating about this infographic is not the sheer number of categories, but the smaller wheel in the center. Reach – Act – Convert – Engage. Sounds oddly familiar, doesn’t it? For those of you unfamiliar with what I am talking about, maybe you should check out this article about Inbound marketing’s 4 pillars.
I admit, it gets a little dodgy there in the middle because we see conversion as the change of visitor into a lead, they see conversion as the change of a lead to a customer, but in the end we’re all talking about the buyers journey!
Inbound Marketing at the Center
Hopefully by now you see where I am going with this. Inbound marketing is the center. It is the gravity of the black hole, pulling and attracting visitors and leads. For those of us who have seen Interstellar maybe that analogy is a bit too harsh. Let’s call it the umbrella (Mary Poppins, that’s better, right?) over all your marketing initiatives. Long story short, Inbound marketing is not a piece of the marketing pie, it IS the marketing pie. Why? Because we have finally realized that the audience is not dumb. They know what they want, so we are finally listening to them and giving them what they want so they will return to us to fulfill their desires.
So, to answer the question, Inbound doesn’t fit into the “mobile migration,” it pulls mobile advertising under its wing and teaches it how to fly. Inbound empowers every aspect of marketing, including mobile advertising.