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I think James makes a lot of good points here. That said, I don't personally agree with him on everything, but I think he's mentioned a few ideas that are new to this conversation, which is awesome and valuable, because I'm as eager to move things forward as anyone. One of his arguments is that the conceivers of the term "Inbound Marketing" clearly have something to gain by having the term take off. I totally agree; if Inbound Marketing takes off, its proponents and early adopters will probably gain new opportunities that they wouldn't have had otherwise. All that said, IMHO they've earned it by getting there first and building out the idea for the rest of us. Innovation is hard work and successful innovation even more so. Godin was able to do this with permission marketing (even though he didn't invent the concept, he "popularized" it). So did Zeldman, Meyer, et al with Web standards. So did Gutenberg with printing. These folks have earned their success through brilliant ideas and hard work -- they've also earned their riches. I don't think success or wealth alone (or even the promise of more/greater success and wealth) disqualifies their ideas whatsoever. If anything, it does something to validate their utility and value. I don't see anything wrong with that. Am I missing something?
Hi Jonathon - I am all for people having new ideas. However, the issue I'm making is that agenda setting and hyperbole are not helpful. Inbound rejects paid methods that do work and it groups 'interruptive' methods with spam http://minus.com/mxZ5HpLwm/1f (what?). I don't think this is helpful for marketers. This video is a brilliant campaign using Google Adwords - it is both inbound and outbound - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHtyQJzTy70. I don't think we need these words, it works better if we aim for integration.
This is a good addition to the debate. On the other hand it's a bit like rejecting climate change or any other change. Whether you like it or not it's there no matter what name you call it. In German we even say climate disaster.
How is rejecting inbound marketing (my reasons are because the thought leader I'm connected to, rejects paid media in his usage of it) in any way like rejecting climate change? 'Inbound marketing' is not a change - it's a grouping of already existing concepts.
Inbound marketing is not a thing Hubspot has invented. They just looked what already happened, gave it a name and popularized the concept. So rejecting it is like saying it's not there while it is.
Hi. Self-confessed, I'm no authority (just started learning/reading about online marketing 4 months ago) to speak out about the issue but IMHO inbound marketing is more of an all-encompassing re-brand than a change. The moniker "search engine optimization", which as a newbie I initially understood as "optimizing for the search engines", in most ways seems to be outdated with the reasoning (in a white-hat sense) that we are actually and should be aiming to "optimize more for better user experience". Search engines are treading that same route as well. SEO plainly in itself is now but a part of a bigger picture that is inbound marketing. Just my two cents though.