What is Inbound Marketing?

Most marketers are familiar with the term “traditional marketing”, especially when found in context being compared to “digital marketing”, “online marketing” or “alternative marketing”. If you really consider the predominant media and tactics that make up “traditional marketing” (TV, Radio, Print, Direct Mail, Out of Home, etc.) you quickly realize that they are all “outbound” tactics – an approach Seth Godin famously coined as “Interruption Marketing” – the tactics that work only if they interrupt you to get your attention.

Inbound Marketing  stands in the opposite corner of the marketing world as an approach that does not depend on interruption, rather it depends on someone actively seeking you out for information on a topic, service, offering or product.


Inbound Marketing is a term that HubSpot coined to summarize the strategy of leveraging SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Blogging and Social Media.

Attract highly qualified customers to your business like a magnet

A more thorough discussion of the differences between Outbound and Inbound Marketing can be found on the HubSpot Blog, excerpted here:

            “Inbound Marketing is marketing focused on getting found by customers.

“In traditional marketing (outbound marketing) companies focus on finding customers. They use techniques that are poorly targeted and that interrupt people. They use cold-calling, print advertising, T.V. advertising, junk mail, spam and trade shows.

“Technology is making these techniques less effective and more expensive. Caller ID blocks cold calls, TiVo makes T.V. advertising less effective, spam filters block mass emails and tools like RSS are making print and display advertising less effective. It's still possible to get a message out via these channels, but it costs more.

“Inbound Marketers flip outbound marketing on its head.

“Instead of interrupting people with television ads, they create videos that potential customers want to see. Instead of buying display ads in print publications, they create their own blog that people subscribe to and look forward to reading. Instead of cold calling, they create useful content and tools so that people call them looking for more information.

“Instead of driving their message into a crowd over and over again like a sledgehammer, they attract highly qualified customers to their business like a magnet.”

 To read the entire post, follow this link to the HubSpot Blog.