Is an Inbound Marketing Strategy Right for You?
Inbound marketing is a great way to supercharge your website, transforming it from a simple billboard to an interactive machine that can -- and will -- develop leads and new customers.
Voillà, your website becomes an investment rather than an expense.
This seems like a no-brainer. After all, what business wouldn't want a return from its website investment? Before embarking on an inbound marketing strategy, however, it makes sense to confirm that this approach is right for your particular business.
To do so, consider the following.
Will an Inbound Marketing Strategy Work for Your Business?
- Are your potential customers online? Inbound marketing is an online strategy, so you obviously need an online audience. This doesn't mean you need to have a lot of customers right now who find you online. It means your customer base should be relatively web savvy. Some companies underestimate this, figuring that since they have a brick-and-mortar location, online marketing is not for them. In truth, most consumers are online today -- just where you want them.
- Are you comfortable creating content for your business? Inbound marketing is all about content. So, it's important to consider whether your business is one where you can envision creating compelling blog posts, white papers, etc. This doesn't mean you have to write them youself. You can hire for that. The question is, do you have expertise that can be shared effectively as web content? Hint, most companies do.
- Can your business make use of leads? The point of inbound marketing is to generate leads through the creation and promotion of compelling content. So you must have a business where leads -- individuals who become interested in your products and services, over time -- are truly useful. Companies that rely solely on impulse purchases, for example, may not care much about long-term leads. But many, many businesses do.
- Will you convert your leads? Getting good leads from your inbound marketing strategy and nuturing them until they are engaged is where the marketing effort ends. Now it's up to sales, and for smaller companies this may well be the CEO. Make sure you're willing to spend the time to follow up with your leads and take the final step of converting them to customers. This should be the fun part, where you actually generate return on investment.
- Are you willing to be scientific? Here, I don't mean go out and get a PhD. Simply put, any inbound marketing strategy is a process that can be measured and produce predictable results. You need to spend some time with your data, analyzing what is working and what can be tweaked. With the use of good inbound marketing software -- we use Hubspot -- the data itself speaks volumes, helping you fine-tune your program for maximum results.
If you decide an inbound marketing strategy is right for your company -- and it is right for quite a number of organizations, of all sizes -- then it's just a matter of getting started. What are you waiting for?