HubSpot Inbound Marketing Introduction

Today I started the Inbound Marketing Online Certification course with HubSpot.  It was very informative.  The introductory module explained the difference between traditional marketing, involving telemarketing and cold calling, and inbound marketing, which is customer-centric and much more thought and research based.

I learned that the first thing to do with an inbound marketing plan is to create a Buyer Persona.  This helps to identify who buyers are demographically, their work responsibility, buying trends, etc.  This is a semi-fictional persona based on real research.  The next step is to use the Buyer's Journey to help identify the process a buyer will go through from awareness, consideration, and lastly, decision-making regarding my product or service.

Understanding what the Buyer's Journey really is will help to identify where stage each part of the inbound marketing process fits into.  This is thinking from the buyer's perspective, not a marketer-centric perspective.  Content in context.  This helps to understand what content the buyer really will be drawn to within the context of their own buying journey to help drive traffic to any one of a number of calls to action.

Lastly, Professor Lindsay walked the viewer through the real case scenario of CFO On-Call company's transition from traditional marketing strategy to inbound marketing strategy.  This was a case study in an effort to show how necessary inbound marketing strategy is in today's world of marketing and how effective it can be.  This real world example was helpful and backed by real data on this company.