inbound marketing

Definition

Attracting customers through valuable content and experiences rather than interrupting them with ads, based on the revolutionary concept that people prefer being helpful to being sold to. It's content marketing with better branding, coined by HubSpot to sell software.

Example Usage

Our inbound marketing strategy involves blogging, SEO, and social media, which is just 'marketing' but with a methodology we can trademark.

Origin

Coined and popularized by HubSpot founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in 2005-2006.

Fun Fact

Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than outbound marketing but takes three times longer to show results, testing executive patience limits.

Source: Content marketing and digital marketing terminology

Related Terms

Intermediate

first-party data

Information a company collects directly from its own customers through owned channels, increasingly precious in a post-cookie world where tracking strangers is frowned upon. The marketing equivalent of growing your own vegetables instead of buying them from sketchy data brokers.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Intermediate

voice of customer

Customer feedback and insights captured through surveys, reviews, support tickets, and other channels that reveal their needs and preferences. Abbreviated VOC, it's all the complaints and suggestions companies collect and then ignore.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Advanced

marketing mix modeling

A statistical analysis technique that quantifies the impact of various marketing activities on sales, using historical data to determine what actually works. It's the marketing equivalent of finally checking the receipts after years of trusting your gut.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

showcard

A physical advertising placard used to display products or promotions in retail environments, back when 'going viral' meant your display was visible from multiple aisles. The analog ancestor of today's digital signage, typically featuring aggressive fonts and starburst shapes screaming about sales. Still surprisingly effective at catching the attention of customers who've developed immunity to banner ads.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

landing page

A standalone web page created specifically for a marketing campaign, stripped of all navigation to trap visitors into a single call-to-action like mice in a very polite maze. It's where conversion optimization goes to either triumph or die trying.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

the fold

The visible portion of a webpage or email before users have to scroll down. The prime real estate where your most important content lives or dies.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

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