When it comes to online marketing, establishing an online brand is the starting point. The goal is to get people to visit your brand via a website or other digitally-based forum. Online brand creation isn’t a passive activity that takes only a few minutes of a marketing budget.

Creating an online brand in today’s e-commerce driven economy requires careful planning before rollout and regular management after. From selling your brand through products online to selling your brand as a service, your brand is your business DNA.

In some ways, inbound marketing is the modern backbone of marketing. Inbound marketing is a matter of directing online marketing best practices toward finding potential customers, or what some call, leads.

Outbound Versus Inbound Marketing 

Outbound marketing looks outward for potential customers. One example of outbound marketing is the weekly shopping newspaper insert. A grocery store publishes this each weak in hopes of attracting customers into the store. Store coupons are another example. Examples of digital outbound marketing include cold email campaigns and press releases. 

 Inbound marketing should attract customers. In the 1989 motion picture Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner’s character built a professional baseball field in an Iowa cornfield. He built the baseball field to attract baseball players. In this way, players inbounded to the field to play baseball. Costner’s character built the baseball field to attract players, which in the end came because he built the field. Inbound digital marketing works in the same way.

Digital marketers create media products that people want to consume through listening, watching, and reading. Then build a website so people come to buy the product. If the online marketer created content that gets people to go to the website, the inbound marketing was a success. Below, we list some forms of inbound marketing.

• Infographics and photos – This media attempts to capture emotion with visual effects. Infographics in particular are helpful when something complex needs explaining. Photographs are good for sharing emotion and connectedness with people.  
• Videos and presentations – YouTube turned into one of the most popular social media forums available. Consequently, YouTube hosts free videos, many of which teach us something useful. As such, videos with subject matter experts are popular advertising venues. Presentations are much the same way but think of something like a Ted Talk.
• Blog posts and podcasts – Blogs seem to be one of the most popular forms of inbound marketing. One reason for this could be the cost. For the price it takes to get some copy written, you can have a blog section of your website. Blogs can be written by subject matter experts to bring in specific customers. Podcasts work in much the same way, but you listen instead of reading the information.
• E-books and whitepapers – These are longer publication-type inbound marketing pieces usually authored by experts in a specific subject. E-books and whitepapers are more formal and academic in nature. As in inbound marketing products, e-books and whitepapers are often used as rewards for joining an email list. Readers (often B2B customers) are motivated to sign up because they want the expert knowledge  
• E-newsletters and e-zines – Composed weekly or monthly, e-newsletters and e-zines keep readers up to date on important events in their specific industry. E-newsletters are one of the best values in online marketing. They are short and to the point, perfect for the mobile customer.

Common in the broad grouping of inbound marketing products listed above is an implied means of digital delivery. This digital delivery is the subject of two inbound marketing tools that are essential for online advertising – search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing.

Why Social Media Is An Important Part of Inbound Marketing

Social media based marketing has exploded in recent years, mainly because social media is where people throughout the globe go every day to socialize. Given the social media platforms we use, it is no wonder that retail markets are intertwined with our online footprints.

Our interactions with retail markets in social media platforms represent the beginning of the inbound marketing process. The things people see and experience inside their social media channels influence their buying habits. Thus, if a company sells vintage coffee mugs, creating social media posts that attract customers to your e-store is the goal.

If we look at the above list of inbound marketing products, all of them can be advertised on a social media platform. Some inbound marketing products can be embedded into the social media post, which offers a clean look.

When you hire Web Rocket Media for your social media advertising needs, you get a team of experts that know which social media platforms attract what type of customers.

SEO is an Inbound Marketing Product

As an inbound marketing product, SEO has many uses. Google creates index pages, so content is discoverable by web crawlers. If a company has several inbound marketing products published throughout the web, there is a high likelihood of a good SERP.

Google crawls social media feeds, even Facebook, which only recently allowed crawling for their members’ page content. Thus, any content listed correctly within social media feeds should help the business’s SEO results.

Web Rocket Media has the best social media advertising professionals in the business. Their many years of experience give them an advantage over other advertising agencies. Furthermore, the professionals at Web Rocket Media know how to tie all inbound marketing products into one advertising campaign.

Closing Thoughts

Inbound marketing has emerged as a crucial element of social media based marketing. This is primarily because various inbound marketing products can be used inside social media feeds and ultimately influence SEO results.

Why is social media an important part of inbound marketing? The short answer is sometimes social media is an inbound marketing product. Seeing social media feeds as platforms for other inbound marketing products lets professional online advertising firms present a comprehensive marketing package.