Interview with Chris Stone. Topic: Inbound Marketing and its Potential


The American Marketing Association defines marketing as the following:

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. (Approved October 2007)

Basically, when it comes down to it, marketing is the process that brings a return of some kind to a business or corporation. This definition has many alternative meanings and even more differentiations depending on where you go. One thing remains true, however, and that is marketing (in any form) is highly crucial to any company – as it is the premiere tool for getting your businesses information out to the world. With that being said, it leaves many businesses – small businesses mostly – with the question of “How do I EFFECTIVELY get my company’s information to the RIGHT individuals?” – a question that has no definitive answer, but a problem that can be countered in many ways. One such way is with inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing, according to HubSpot – the internet marketing company that has been phrased as the creator of the inbound marketing movement – is a way for small businesses to generate website traffic by quality sources while weeding out the fluff produced by the Internet. In essence, small businesses using inbound marketing are being “found” by the customers who need them the most.

To gain a better perspective on this unique and growing marketing concept, I sought the professional advice of Mr. Chris Stone, the principal marketing strategist for Rock Solid Media, LLC – a company specialized in inbound marketing in Galion, OH. I wanted to pick apart Mr. Stone’s brain and learn what his interpretation of inbound marketing was and how he uses it in growing his client’s customer base via online tools.

Chris did not always have the intention of working with small businesses in building their brand. He did not even study business – but graduated from Ohio Northern in 2001 with a degree focusing on sports management and administration – stating he really wanted to work as a sports administrator or athletic director. However, he saw through that profession some individuals did not truly appreciate their gifts as athletes, hence his move to a career that “serves [my] inner hunger to help people.”

Being unfamiliar with inbound marketing I asked what he thought it consisted of. The answer to my question came in the form of an analogy: “Think about how many people drive through the desert? First of all, how many people actually DRIVE through a desert?! None.” His analogy caught me off-guard a little bit, until he brought it home. Lets face it – most small businesses are ran and operated by the proprietor, and sometimes that proprietor is not equipped with the online knowledge his or her bigger counterparts have. Small businesses attempting to put their name(s) out in cyberspace are essentially setting up a billboard in the middle of the desert with no one driving by seeing it. That is where the help of inbound marketing comes in. Chris specified that there are three things that inbound marketing can do to alleviate the problems faced by small businesses in this situation:

            1. Help businesses increase website traffic by qualified visitors.
            2. Turn those qualified visitors into qualified leads.
            3. From those two, grow the business from all aspects.

My question to that is, since the Internet is a giant conglomerate of information, both needed and seemingly excessive, how does one gain the recognition needed.   

“I’m a terrible employee, “ states Chris, saying that he does not like to follow the norms set by the industry. Sharing my mantra of “there has to be a better way of doing this,” he has done just that in working in the inbound marketing realm. He has taken the marketing box that so many businesses have been locked into, and has found interesting ways of keeping said box, but twisting it so that it works for him and his clients. He also says that it definitely “takes time,” and that success for a small business (especially in our economic downturn) could come weeks, months, or even years down the road – but that the implication of inbound marketing practices could work in speeding up that success … if done correct.

Among the slue of questions, I asked Chris how he kept his clients engaged. A lot of small businesses find it difficult to retain customers because people are always expecting the newest, brightest, and best thing, and what happens to a business that has trouble in keeping up with the demands of customers?

“You have to market to personas.”

Creating detailed and specified marketing tactics to engage your audience will help in generating a staying factor that will not only retain current customers, but may have the benefit of reeling in potential customers as well. And speaking of reeling in new individuals, he continued in saying that networking has become a huge success factor. Networking in its simplest form has been around forever, but has become a deciding factor in success and failure in the last 20 years with the advent of social media. Using popular outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, and the growing use of LinedIn has shown immense promise in promoting businesses, both B2C and B2B. In the words of Mr. Stone, “LinkedIn is a big after-hour business cocktail party.” – and he is correct. More and more businesses are turning to LinkedIn as it is truly an up-and-coming B2B tool that helps in building strong relationships – but the problem is people as well as businesses are not using it to its fullest potential. Mr. Stone also points that a business (with the help of a marketer, perhaps) needs to find the right mix of which social media aspects to use. Does your business do better with ads on Facebook and Twitter? Or would it benefit with a blog? And what about this LinkedIn? Trial and error in this matter is the only way of seeing what the best approach is for your specific business area. Closing that statement, Mr. Stone left me with a summation of four key parts to using social media for success:

1. Create           
2. Promote
3. Convert
4. Analyze

In closing, Mr. Stone left me with some advice that he felt lived up to everyone: saying that we need to be able to fall fast, learn from our mistakes, but always go right back at it with a fresh attitude and new idea – something that will take the trials and tribulations that we have witnessed and turn them into something utterly amazing. The future of small businesses with inbound marketing have nowhere to go but up – and businesses like Rock Solid Media, LLC will be popping up all over once this idea spans the globe – because our global society is ready to step out of the desert, and into the business world. Hope they are ready for what lies ahead.