2011-02-20

One Minute Book Review: Inbound Marketing

Over the Christmas holiday, I finally got around to something I had planned for a while: reading Brian Halligan's and Dharmesh Shah's very popular
Inbound Marketing: Get Found using Google, Social Media, and Blogs

The business world is changing. And it's changing fast. One of the most interesting statistics supporting this does not appear until the last chapter of the book. Here it is:

Between 1955 and 1995, on average, every year there were 20 companies leaving the Fortune 500 and 20 new ones joining. Since 1995 this number doubled to 40. Of the 500 companies in the Fortune 500 in 1995, only 250 remained in 2009!

So why did companies like Amazon, eBay and Google replace other ones likes Toys 'R' Us and Polaroid? The answer to this question is very much related to why Obama defeated McCain in the 2008 US presidential elections.

So what did the Obama campaign have in common with Amazon, eBay and Google?

They realized that throwing the most money at traditional media (television, print) to repeat the same message to as many people as possible as often as possible may not be the most effective anymore.

The point Brian and Dharmesh make is that this 50 year era of outbound marketing is coming to a close. People are getting increasingly better at blocking out these messages.

We are now at the dawn of a new era in the field of marketing: inbound marketing. Instead of focusing on bombarding as many people as possible with a message they don't want to hear, there are new rules that must be mastered on the road to success. Producing remarkable content that people want to read about is the way forward. Turning customers into fans.

And it turns out, we live in an age where it has never been easier. And yet it has never been harder. Google, Facebook, Blogs and Twitter enable anyone to produce great content and get found. Quality trumps dollars. And yet, all of a sudden the competition became global.

How can you and your company stand out and become better at this game?

This book is filled with practical advice on how to get there. Putting Google, Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn and your blog to use, to achieve a loyal following who will help you spreading the word. And the work they will spread is one about how it is worth their time to be involved with the remarkable things you do!

Highly recommended.

 

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About Axel Fontaine

Axel Fontaine is the founder and CEO of Boxfuse the easiest way to deploy JVM and Node.js applications to AWS.

Axel is also the creator and project lead of Flyway, the open-source tool that makes database migration easy.

He is a Continuous Delivery and Immutable Infrastructure expert, a Java Champion, a JavaOne Rockstar and a regular speaker at many large international conferences including JavaOne, Devoxx, Jfokus, JavaZone, QCon, JAX, ...

You can follow him on Twitter at @axelfontaine