Rank Top Inbound Marketing Tactics by Trust – SEM Synergy Extras

It wasn’t long ago that the outbound marketing methods were a marketer’s only option. Traditional push marketing involves getting your message in front of your target audience, whether or not they’re looking for it. TV ads, print ads and cold calling are all examples of outbound/push marketing. These days marketers have an advantageous new weapon in their arsenal. Inbound marketing, or pull marketing, prompts a potential customer to come to the business. When a consumer locates a business Web site through a search engine, that’s an example of successful inbound marketing.

Today’s episode of SEM Synergy focuses on inbound marketing — the psychology behind it, various channels, and available tools. Larry Kim, founder and vice president of product development at WordStream, was my guest, sharing his thoughts on the power of inbound marketing and some useful inbound marketing tips. For example, he recommends creating a cycle in which SEO results continually inform PPC efforts, and PPC results are used to tune SEO efforts. SEO and PPC are two marketing tactics that fall squarely into the inbound marketing category, but they aren’t the only ones.

The Web has helped spawn numerous inbound marketing methods, each with its own use, reach and trust level. Trust is an important consideration when it comes to inbound marketing efforts. In inbound marketing, a marketer depends on an individual being moved to seek the business out,

Photo by papalars via Creative Commons

and the person will have to trust the resource that pointed them to your business in the first place.

In order to help marketers identify the most trusted forms of inbound marketing, I thought it would be useful to conduct a quick poll that rates the trust factor of various inbound marketing techniques. With input from a few experienced marketers, the results of this poll should help us spot which inbound marketing tactics are most relied upon by consumers. Trust is rated on a scale from 1 to 7, with 1 being the most trustworthy and 7 being the least trustworthy.

How do you rate the trustworthiness of the following inbound marketing tactics?

Word of Mouth

Social Media

Organic Search

Paid Search Ads

Viral Videos

Downloadable E-books & White Papers

Subscription-based Blogs, Feeds & RSS

Webinars

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.