27A – Reading Reflection No. 3

1) What was the general theme or argument of the book?
I read Inbound marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. Its general theme was inbound marketing and what a business can do to be found on the internet. This book explained all the techniques a business should use to go beyond traditional outbound marketing and start pulling potential customers toward your business through the internet.

2) How did the book, in your opinion, connect and enhance with what you are learning in ENT 3003?
I think there are many ways in which the book I read connects with this class. The book’s purpose is to explain how to attract more potential customers and at the same time this class allowed me to interview members of my target group to find out what I can do to make my business and idea more appealing. Also, ENT 3003 is a class that develops mainly around a blog and Inbound Marketing often highlights the importance of blogs, websites and social media to attract more visitors and convert them into real customers. I’d even go further and connect it to the whole marketing strategy of the business idea I developed through ENT 3003.

3) If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?
If I had to design an exercise for this class, it would involve the creation of a remarkable blog content to be posted in our business blog. This content can include an article or a video with a catchy title and it can’t be used as an advertisement for our business/product. In fact, according to Halligan and Shah, the purpose of remarkable content is to attract as many visitors as possible, to make them take part in the conversation by leaving a comment and to make them subscribe, so that later they could become customers. Essentially it would be in exercise in developing value-added content similar to how Bob Ross created value added content in the form of free painting tutorials which acted a vehicle to sell his branded paint supplies.

4) What was your biggest surprise or ‘aha’ moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations?
I didn’t really find any surprise moment while reading this book. The only thing that differed from my expectations was that inbound marketing requires a lot of effort and constant control, even when hiring specialized employees, because they have to fulfil certain requirements. In fact, there are ways to track your progress in every chapter of this book. Even if a lot of effort is required, this type of marketing is today more profitable and less expensive than the traditional one, so I believe it would be worth it to adopt all the techniques described in the book.