Hi there! I'm Lindsay with HubSpot Academy. Let me
introduce you to the world of inbound and provide you with a
big picture view of everything your business needs for a
successful inbound strategy. First, what is inbound? Inbound
is a fundamental shift in the way you do business and is a
philosophy based on helping people. The inbound approach to
doing business is more human and customer-centered. In today's
world, buyers have all the power. There's been a massive
shift in the relationship between businesses and buyers.
Now, a buyer has more information about your product,
industry, and competition. Inbound is a better way to
market, a better way to sell, and a better way to help your
customers. If your customers are able to grow than your business
will too. Growth is the result of a well-executed inbound
strategy. So, instead of interruption-based messaging
where businesses had all the control, inbound is about
EMPOWERING your buyers. You need to align with the way buyers
think, research, and purchase. It's about being helpful and
being a business that's helpful during each experience they have
with you and your business. Rise to the challenge to meet
consumers where they are. Here's Brian Halligan, CEO and
co-founder of HubSpot on what inbound means to him... Inbound
means to me, it's kind of a state of mind, you know? The old
way you went to market was outbound. It was very
interruption-oriented. It's sort of extracted value out of your
prospects, and it wasn't fun for the prospect and it wasn't fun
for the person who was going to market with the message.
Inbound's a new way to go to market. It's a new way to go to
market that is a much more lovable way to go to market for
the marketer and the marketee. Inbound really strives to help
people go to market in a way that matches the way humans want
to be sold and marketed to in 2018. Inbound, it's almost like
a state of mind to me. To practice inbound, you need to be
inbound. Being an inbound business means your building
relationships and having conversations with (not at) your
audiences by giving them value. Being a part of that
conversation means sharing helpful, relevant content and at
the right time. It's about drawing people in -- that's why
it's called inbound, after all. If you want to get value out of
prospects and customers, you need to give them an experience
that they value. This includes a good marketing, sales, and
customer experience. Here's Brian Halligan again. The other
big change that's going on is I've felt like, at least when I
was growing up in my career, the best product always won. What
you sold was really important. I think more and more it's about
how you sell it. When they say how you sell, it's about
creating that, just that end-to-end delightful experience
don't have to look far for that type of thing. Look at the music
industry, it's been totally turned upside down by Spotify.
Spotify, it's a better model of buying it, and it learns from
you and it changes over time, the service is better. Amazon,
they've disrupted virtually everything, it's just a better
way to buy. Yes, it's cheaper, but it's more convenient, the
service is better, it's fantastic. Everything. Look at
Uber. It's a car that drives you around, taxis do the same thing.
It's a better business model, a better go-to-market, a better
service model. I think the companies that really do well
today are the ones that leverage data to create a gorgeous end-
to-end experience for that customer from marketing, when
they find you, through to sales, when they become a customer,
through to service, and then back to marketing. Consumers'
buying behaviors are going to continue to change and evolve.
Your inbound tactics and tools will also change and evolve, but
the inbound philosophy will still remain true. It's a
philosophy about pulling people in by being helpful. By actually
caring about what the problems of your potential buyers and how
you can help solve them. That's why inbound should extend to
every aspect of your business. Here's Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot's
CTO and co-founder on this fundamental shift... So, inbound
is really about a more empathetic human approach to
business, whether it's marketing, or sales, or customer
service. So, the idea is to put yourself in the customer's
shoes, and to say "How would I want to be marketed to? How
would I want to be sold to? How would I want to get service from
a company?" So, marketing sales and service have all been
changing, and are continuing to change. And they're all changing
in similar ways, but at different rates. So, marketing
is changing earlier and faster than we saw over the last 10
years. So, a change in marketing, essentially was as
people, we got tools that allowed us to block out
marketing messages, to block out outbound. And so, as a result of
those tools, we didn't have to get inundated with marketing
messages anymore. For sales, we got access to information. So,
no longer did we have to rely on a sales rep to tell us things
about pricing, or customer reviews. We could just find that
information on the internet. So, that's the kind of fundamental
shift that started to happen. In the world of customer service,
what's changed is now we have choices. So, back 10, 20 years
ago, you could only choose between three providers. And so
you had to deal with whatever service they gave you. And now,
customers have a choice. So, that's radically changing how we
approach customer service. You've probably come across some
of your favorite brands actively practicing inbound. It's that
problem-solving blog post that shows on your Facebook feed.
It's the product review that you found after doing a quick search
in Google. The sales representative that you worked
with you to help solve your problem at the appropriate time.
Or that question you had about your subscription that got
easily answered by a customer service representative on the
company's website. Experiences that felt personalized.
Experiences that felt relevant. Experiences that felt helpful.
Inbound is a philosophy that if you fully embrace it, it will
transform your business. If you haven't already caught on, there
are some common themes when it comes to inbound. The core
tenants of inbound are about being more human, helpful, and
holistic in how you market, how you sell to people, and how you
help your customers be more successful. It's about being as
helpful as you can be as you're trying to take a prospect and
turn them into a customer and how you are trying to help your
customers see more value from your product or service. You
want to treat people that are having any type of experience
they're having with your business as a human, not just a
number. Every individual is unique and they want to be
treated that way. And having all of your vectors aligned around
an inbound approach approach provides holistic experience for
anyone that interacts with your business no matter where they
are in their buying journey. It's time for you to support
your prospect's buying process. It's time for you to join in and
empower buyers and customers to make the right decisions for
themselves.