Assignment 21A Reading Reflection No. 2

Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan

• What was the general theme or argument of the book?
• The book emphasizes the benefits of inbound marketing, where you are attracting customers in the sense that they find you, rather than pushing your business onto them. Because, as customers are becoming more prone to ignoring outbound marketing targeted at them, Halligan stresses the benefits of inbound marketing and how to effectively implement it throughout this book. Overall, Inbound marketing details how to convert people from visitors, to prospects, leads, opportunities, then customers through the use of search engine optimization, social media, and blogs. 

• How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?
• I found that chapter 6 of the book most correlated and enhanced what we learned in Dr. Pryor's Lecture 20, where he discussed the role of marketing in entrepreneurship and the importance of search engine optimization and finding leads. SEO is a significant aspect in entrepreneurship, being that in order for your business to be recognized by customers, it is important that you increase the chances that your site will show up as high as possible in the search results when a user searches for a keyword regarding your business. Dr. Pryor emphasized an important aspect that was also discussed in Chapter 6 of the book, being that if the site of your company is not being found on Google, you are missing out on an opportunity to generate leads for your business. As Dr. Pryor gave an outline in his lecture of how to reach this optimization by choosing the right search term, proper use of the term, and gaining link backs, I was able to find some familiarities in the book- which gave a more in depth outline of how to improve your SEO with tips and steps of the entire process- ultimately enhancing my overall understanding of the topic. 

• If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?
• An exercise that the class can do based on Inbound Marketing, would be practicing search engine optimization. In which, they would have to determine a list of keywords regarding your business, that would optimize their company's website to be on the first page of the google search. They would have to figure out the best methods of implementing these key words into their website, whether its in the url, title, page description, etc, in order to gain the best results. I believe that this exercise will be useful for students and give them a better understanding of the importance of the aspects of marketing their company in order for it to become successful. 

• What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? What did you learn that differed most from your expectations?
• I think reading this book as a whole was an 'aha' moment, because it made me realize how effective inbound marketing really is today. Everyone has the idea that marketing is all about promoting your product in order to get others to buy it, using a ton of techniques to reach your potential buyers like advertising, telemarketing, direct mail, etc. Though, with these traditional marketing techniques, consumers today are most likely more prone to ignore and avoid these promotions, making the marketing strategy less effective. Though, as technology has become a part of our everyday lives, we don't even realize that the actions we do through the internet and social media daily is what inbound marketing is all about, which makes it so effective today. In which, as we are constantly shopping and gathering information through our search engines and social media, we are being attracted to different businesses and products through our own search. Where marketers behind this using inbound marketing, just have to be sure they are prospecting their customers and implementing strategies to improve their search engine optimization in order for their business to be successful. Overall, reading this book gave me the realization of why inbound marketing is so effective today, which I considered to be an 'aha' moment because I was one of those people who instantly thought of the traditional marketing techniques when asked about marketing. I never really looked into the idea that through the constant searching on the internet and scrolling through social media on our own, it was inbound marketing taking place- being that the use of technology has been so routine for us today. In which, I feel this is why I was so interested in reading the book and gaining more knowledge on inbound marketing overall.