A New Generation Marketer

Traditional marketing as we know it is fading out, and fast (the rate is variable based on the medium). Internet and ‘inbound marketing’ is now in and companies are adopting its techniques left and right. However, here are 10 things you must be aware of that will happen if you implement inbound marketing.

1. You will develop a community around your product that will LOVE it, rave about it and spread the word, and very fast if you do it right. Beware of a sudden rush of buzz and followers!

2. You will get an unusually high amount of inbound leads online through different inbound marketing lead techniques such as website contact forms and emails. Hope your queue and servers are ready for this!

3. Your name will be spread all over the Internet, and fast. If you don’t like to be talked about, don’t use inbound marketing. If you are the only one who likes to talk about you and no one else, then I highly suggest NOT using inbound marketing…

4. You will have to hire socialites and Internet techies. This means new hires and interviewing highly connected and very smart people. (Hope HR is ready!)

5. You will have to learn a new type of writing: instead of advertisement and radio lingo, you will need to start writing blog posts and internet content. And who wants to do that? …

6. You will meet people at events that you had only met on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Are you ready to meet your peers and brand evangelists in person? If you like to stay behind the scenes, do NOT meet these people!

7. You will have to take a leap of faith and be ready to let go of the control of buzz around your brand to see what customers have to say about you. This means actually LISTENING to what customers have to say, respond to feedback and interact with them on a daily basis. Valuable information could be gathered from this. But, who wants to do this anyways?

8. You will have to spend extra time and money learning SEO, HTML, website development and management, and fixing bugs. Forget that, just stick to your old traditional ways to save money.

9. You may have to be featured in an online video to personally talk about your product and seem excited about it. If you like to pretend that you like the product you market and advertise for without being seen, then definitely stay behind the media and continue with impersonal outbound marketing.

10. Instead of telling people why they must love your product, inbound marketing may force you to find customers who already love it and find out why. These customers may come from your website, emails, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and many other sources. This may be a game changer to find out why people really do love your product, not why you want them to love your product, so watch out!