4Ps of Inbound Marketing

Back when I was in college, we were taught the 4 Ps of Marketing. These are Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. These are the basics so naturally, it is still important and we cannot work a business without these things.

The 4 Ps evolved as time went on, this is to better suit the demand of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is anything that you do as an entrepreneur to get in touch with potential customers. Inbound marketing can be done through social networking, search engine optimization, or article marketing. The beauty of inbound marketing is that it is an efficient way to generate sales leads through associations produced by social media through inbound links, and through search engine rankings. The 4Ps of inbound marketing are:

• Personas
• Participation
• Publishing
• PageRank

Persona – Buyer personas are the basis of highly effective inbound marketing campaigns. Persona is not just limited to the profile of your target market. It also includes bloggers who write about your market niche, media outlets and current customers. As an entrepreneur, you should consider your potential customers’ goals, what sort of media to they turn to solve their problems, and what kind of multimedia attracts them.

The more thought you put into your persona, the more efficiently you will be able to connect with potential consumers, and others (bloggers) who have the power to get your name and message in front of those who need to know about you and what you offer.

Participation – The face of internet marketing has been forever changed by Social Networks. Marketing these days is all about making connections, building relationships and sharing information. It is not just about influencing potential customers by placing your marketing message across. As a marketer, you need to know that relationships are important in the process of inbound marketing.

“Once every hundred years media changes. The last hundred years have been defined buy the mass media. In the next hundred years information won’t just be pushed out to people: It will be shared among the millions of connection people have.” -- Mark Zuckerberg Facebook founder

Participate in the social web by monitoring your favorite blogs, write comments on blogs whenever your comments are appropriate, rating and reviewing products that are relevant to your market niche, posting to forum discussions that are relevant to your products or services. Set-up accounts with MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and make sure that you maximize these networks.

Publishing – Traditional marketing involves using print media, broadcast media, etc. most of these methods require a lot of monetary investment. On the other hand, inbound marketing uses blogs, case studies, eBooks, and articles. Let us compare the two types or marketing mentioned, it is obvious that inbound marketing is less expensive than traditional marketing.

Marketers rarely have to pay for advertising space given the wide variety of free content distribution opportunities available. Make sure that your content is constantly updated and always relevant.

PageRank – This is Google’s method of measuring a site’s popularity. You can increase your inbound links quickly by publishing first-rate, relevant content, and by natural search engine optimization. And the higher your PageRank, the more your site will be sought out by potential customers, competitors, and those with whom you can build important relationships.

All these 4 elements that I have mentioned is important to a company’s marketing plan. Once you have mastered each and every element developing an effective marketing plan will be really easy.