Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on being found by customers rather than seeking them out, like in traditional marketing

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What are strategies that seek out customers?

These are techniques that are poorly targeted and interrupt customers in their day to day lives. This sometimes causes them to not interact or becoming annoyed with the brand. Worst case scenario, the associate that annoyed feeling with the brand and have a negative feeling toward the brand making them more likely to purchase from competitors. Examples of this is cold-calling, junk mail, spam, etc.The fact is these techniques are becoming less effective anyway with the developments in technology e.g. Caller ID, block calls, filter block mass email.

Inbound marketing is essentially the opposite of outbound marketing techniques. Businesses set up blogs and social media sites that people will look for and subscribe to. Having the customer come to you makes it more likely that they will read the information you offer on these sites. Creating useful content on the site keeps customers interested and having contact info means they can contact you when they want rather than you spending money on cold-calls.