Welcome to my introductory post at our Inbound Marketing Automation blog. Some rants, some raves, and hopefully a lot of big-picture insights on the new phenomenon of Inbound Marketing Automation.

In my 30 years of Business-to-Business Marketing, I can truly say that the shift from Outbound to Inbound Marketing is the most dramatic shift in B2B Marketing that I have witnessed.  Some call it a shift from Marketing 1.0 to 2.0 (of which Inbound Marketing is a key part). Either way, this seismic shift offers massive benefits for B2B marketers that embrace the opportunity.

Not yet familiar with the concept of Inbound Marketing? Check out our Glossary of Inbound Marketing Automation terms. I assume most readers will have heard of Inbound Marketing, because the “buzz” gauges are definitely rising. Google’s Keyword Tool shows that queries for “Inbound Marketing” is already getting more than half the monthly volume of “B2B Marketing” in the US and Canada.  Some quick research using Reputation Management Analytics (Here at Gossamar, we partner with Sysomos, a very powerful package that scans the internet on an almost real-time basis) tells us that the buzz sentiment for Inbound Marketing is over 95% favourable. These quick metrics may not qualify as robust market research, but they too are the way of the future.

Want to take a free one- week crash course in Inbound Marketing, complete with virtual classroom, exam and certification? Then go to Inbound Marketing University.  Kudos to Rebecca Corliss and HubSpot for grabbing this trend, and adding some real value to our B2B marketing industry. I took the course in July. Not quite a Cornell MBA, but worth your time! Some of the lectures were outstanding, such as Advanced SEO Tactics by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.

So clearly the Inbound Marketing rocket is taking off. Here at Gossamar, we hope to inject a little extra octane in the fuel.

What’s our contribution?

1. Pulling together the big picture. If you are a typical B2B Marketer, you don’t have time for a PHD in the minutiae of SEO or Social Media Marketing. We’ll keep you updated on the really big issues, so you can keep doing your day job and still remain up-to-date on Inbound Marketing trends. Just bottom-line, “Show me the money” stuff.  At our website, you’re going to find a lot of great Inbound Marketing whitepapers and other additional resources with this same high-level perspective.
2. The Automation piece of the puzzle. Inbound Marketing means that your company (and especially your website) becomes a “prospect magnet”. With the sheer numbers of inquiries, leads, prospects, and associated marketing data, you will quickly become overwhelmed without automation.  Bottom line: You can’t do this manually! That’s why our blog is not entitled Inbound Marketing, but Inbound Marketing Automation.  We cover not only the what, but also the “how to”. There are lots of individual automation pieces out there, but I believe no one puts together an end-to-end marketing automation suite like we do.

Just to make sure we’re on the same page, I am going to spend the next few posts on laying the groundwork.  To fully understand the nature of this opportunity, I’ll cover the 4 underlying shifts that are affecting all of us B2B marketers. It will include a more detailed look at Inbound Marketing, and why Outbound is, well, out:

1. The shift in power from The Seller to The Buyer
2. The shift from Outbound to Inbound
3. The shift from Manual to Automation
4. The shift from Art to Science

Until next time – Axel

Tags: b2b marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing 2.0, Marketing Automation, Reputation Management

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 10:59 am and is filed under Blog Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.