Assignment 21- Reading Reflection No. 2

I chose to do this reading reflection on Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. I really enjoyed this book and felt that I learned a lot of relevant information about how to be successful in today's business climate.




1) What was the general theme or argument of the book?

The purpose of this book is to explain how to fill the gap between helping one’s company grow and the way that customers are marketed to. Halligan and Shah  explain that “Inbound marketing” refers to the new way in which customers shop and buy, it is about pulling customers in by using increased information and knowledge about the business/product. The overall argument of this book, however, was that due to the transformation in the way people live their day to day lives by shopping and increased use of the internet' outbound marketing is out and inbound marketing is in. The book aims to explain the importance of various aspects of inbound marketing, ranging from web design all the way to the company’s strategy. Overall, the authors attempt to explain and devises way to navigate this new push for inbound marketing.



2) How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?

The book had a lot to do with what I am currently learning in ENT3003 because it had to deal with ways to improve the overall success of your business, one area at a time. In ENT we are learning how to create a business and will eventually need to know how to continue to make the business grow and successful. Without certain marketing tools in today’s society that growth is nearly impossible. Halligan and Shah even talked about how making a blog could be one aspect of how the business can connect more with customers, which I found interesting because now after taking ENT I will have my own personal experience with creating and running a blog. Lastly, the book helped me to grow my knowledge on the topic of making decisions. I learned about the steps necessary to make smarter marketing choices, for example, using a “funnel” comprised of specific steps in the process.



3) If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?

The exercise I would create for the class based on Inbound Marketing would be for students to create a prototype website for their business. By prototype, I mean one that has everything on the screen but doesn’t necessarily have everything hyperlinked so that if you click on one item it would bring you to another page. Those bells and whistles can be described in a summary of what the student aims for the page to eventually become. I feel this goes well with the book because Halligan and Shah talk about the importance of using one’s company website as a marketing hub.



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?

My biggest Aha moment while reading Inbound Marketingwas when I read the chapter on social media and got into the section about how Facebook ads work. I obviously knew these were a huge way the Facebook profited from their website but I wasn’t sure how the businesses on the other end used them. I had no idea businesses are able to choose the demographic that their ad is shown to! It makes sense now how this could be extremely valuable to a business.