Book Review: Inbound Marketing – Halligan/Shah

Help me understand the new marketing paradigm,” is one question that more and more small businesses are asking me. Of course few use the word paradigm but that is at the bottom of all these questions, “marketing has changed what direction should I go in?”

I was toying with the idea of putting together a white paper addressing these questions and give a copy to all potential customers when I stumbled across a new book entitled Inbound Marketing by authors Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, I called my local Barnes & Noble on the day of release, secured a copy and picked it up that afternoon.

I was pleasantly surprised to find it had a hard cover, I like reading books in hard cover. The book is short at a little over 200 pages with lots of cartoons and diagrams to help them make their points and observations, but don’t let the size of the text fool you, it shoe-horns a wealth of information in a small space.

…Inbound Marketing

Made up of 3 chapters concisely laying out where things are now. My favorite part in this section Creating a Remarkable Strategy they say ” The first method is to think across the traditional boundaries of your marketplace to alternatives ,not just competitors.”

….Get Found By Prospects

This section has 4 chapters and increasingly gets deeper into the strength of the the book, that is tips observations and real world examples that will help any business get a handle on what they need to know before hiring a marketing firm or an in-house addition.

….. Converting Customers

this section has 3 chapters, Convert Visitors into Leads, Convert Prospects into Leads and Convert Leads into Customers.  Website’s can potentially create a tremendous amount of data for a business to use in gaining new leads and customers, Section 3 offers a wide view on how to think and structure that new data.

….Make Better Decisions

This last section has four chapters that shine a light on what to look for in hiring a PR firm and in understanding your competition, it finishes up with a pep talk. chapter 12 Picking and Measuring Your People is a must read, the authors intro of D.A.R.C. will be a big help to any business.

What did I think of the book? As I started to read I thought it was light on substance but about a third of a way through the book I could see how these guys had constructed a book that would give anyone from the head of a marketing dept to a single operator a leg up in this new paradigm shift. It should be required reading for all businesses who want to understand Inbound Marketing before they hire someone to help them out. The books many how-to and real world examples making for ease in understanding. The book is now available at your local bookstores and at