Around this time of the year, simply mentioning that you work in marketing (or worse yet, advertising) just might find you on the wrong end of a swift punch to the face. After all, for months now, advertisers all across the country have been assaulting consumers with a barrage of glossy newspaper inserts, unwanted catalogs and a constant stream of TV commercials aimed at brainwashing unsuspected preschoolers.

So, to be honest, turnabout seems only fair.

That said, if you’re a marketer who is still utilizing these annoying, outdated and ultimately ineffective techniques, we offer the following public service announcement in the hope that you might change your ways and—in turn—save us all a lot of face.

If they want to hear from you, they will find you

This concept is scary, I get it. You have got a bottom line to meet and widgets to move, you can’t just leave those things to chance, you have to get out there and beat some bushes and knock on some doors, right?

Wrong.

Times have changed. Consumers no longer depend on advertisers for their information, they have the power to go out and find it for themselves and, at the same time, they have countless tools and techniques at their disposal to shut you out. So, rather than trying to bombard consumers with messages that they may or may not want, when they may or may not want them, your job is to have the information ready and waiting when they come knocking.

It’s a concept commonly referred to as inbound marketing (coined by Brian Halligan at Hubspot).

The idea behind this new direction in marketing is to create content that answers a consumer’s question—or provides information that they will otherwise find useful—and then post it online via social media, your website, a blog or all three. Once it’s out there (assuming it has been strategically written for search engine optimization) anyone typing in keywords related to your information will find you. At that point, you shift from being someone who is simply out for their money to someone who is a valuable resource and a trusted friend.

As Jay Baer puts it in his book “Youtility,” content marketing moves you away from “top-of-mind” marketing to something he calls the “friend-of-mine” approach. The hardest part about this approach for most old-school marketers, is that for it to really work, and for you to really gain the trust of consumers, you can’t be focused on “selling,” instead you have to focus solely on being useful and satisfying your audience’s unique needs.

Talk to them, not at them

Inbound marketing is a dramatic shift from traditional interruption-based marketing techniques, because not only are you letting your customers come to you, you’re actively engaging them in a conversation. This ongoing dialog allows you to continue to answer questions while gaining valuable information that can be used in the development of future messaging or even in the development of your products or services themselves.

In closing, one of the biggest advantages of abandoning traditional interruption-based marketing in favor of inbound marketing (other than not getting us all punched in the face) is that inbound marketing allows you to create genuine brand loyalty. After all, while a one-time purchase may look good on this quarter’s profit report, return customers lead to long-term success.