Inbound marketing

For a related term see permission marketing. For the product management sense of inbound marketing, see product management.

Inbound marketing is promoting a company through blogs, podcasts, video, eBooks, newsletters, whitepapers, SEO, physical products, social media marketing, and other forms of content marketing which serve to attract customers through the different stages of the purchase funnel. In contrast, buying attention, cold-calling, direct paper mail, radio, TV advertisements, sales flyers, spam, telemarketing and traditional advertising are considered "outbound marketing". Inbound marketing refers to marketing activities that bring visitors in, rather than marketers having to go out to get prospects' attention. Inbound marketing earns the attention of customers, makes the company easy to be found, and draws customers to the website by producing interesting content.An important fact in inbound marketing is providing customer feedback channels with the company for creating both trustworthy relationships as well as for consultations and sales. First of all it’s a phone number, a feedback form, live chat (e.g. HipChat, LiveChat, LiveAgent), an automatic callback free for the clients (e.g. Callmaker). Many companies are now realizing that their technical documentation, often considered a "necessary evil", is authoritative, trustworthy content that can be a company's most effective inbound marketing channel, generating more than half of overall site traffic and over half of lead generation.