The Inbounder is holding its first marketing conference the 19th and 20th of May at the City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia. But what should you know about the concept of inbound marketing?
20 de de maig de 2016
What is Inbound Marketing?
Modern marketing can be separated into two groups: outbound and inbound. As its name suggests, outbound marketing implies having to reach out to customers – TV ads, email marketing, or paying to ‘highlight’ a social media channel/website on search engines, for example. It’s meant to reach a broad, usually unfiltered audience and be intrusive.
Likewise, the be-all and end-all of inbound marketing is to generate a sale, but the strategy is the exact opposite. Inbound marketing focuses on reeling in potential customers instead of actively searching for them. This is achieved by creating content that stands alone from the product on sale: blog posts, tutorials, eBooks…
An apt comparison would be fishing (inbound) as opposed to hunting (outbound): bait (content) is used to ‘hook’ customers onto the product. Both methods require being where the customer is, but only outbound marketing has the product at the forefront.
The term was first coined and heavily promoted by marketing firm HubSpot. The concept is relatively recent, since most (but not all) content strategies are linked to social media promotion and online positioning.
A Global Conference?
According to their website, the Inbounder Global Conference is “the greatest Inbound Marketing event” in Europe. Over 1.500 attendees are expected over a two-day period (19-20 May) at the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia.
Programmed for the event are seminars and workshops led by the CEOs, Consultors or Marketing Directors of firms such as Coca-Cola, Save the Children or the aforementioned HubSpot. In total 24 speakers from all around the world will share their expertise on brand management, trends, content design, SEO, web commerce and e-commerce, amongst many other topics.
The Inbounder brand (launched and led by SEO Strategist Gianluca Fiorelli) has also planned other smaller events for 2016. Three-hour ‘Roadshows’ in Bogotá, Milan and Miami are currently scheduled for this year, while others have already been held in Madrid, Málaga, Barcelona or Alicante.
They also held their first Think Tank in May last year (which ended up developing into this year’s conference), where 50 marketing professionals gathered to discuss the future of SEO, content marketing and Social Media. The result was a Digital Marketing eBook/Manifesto.
While the event is underway, those interested can follow how the Conference is developing through the hashtag #TheInbounder or the company’s social media channels.
