Many businesses have a plethora of things to worry about when launching their new product or service. They have sales, marketing, operations, finance, and maybe even internal human resources challenges to tackle.
One of the largest mistakes new entrepreneurs make is failing to incorporate a solid inbound marketing plan for their company. This is partly because they don’t know what inbound marketing is or it sounds complicated so they tend to shy away from it.
Additionally, startups that house small marketing teams don’t implement inbound marketing tactics because either the in-house marketers are so overwhelmed with getting their digital campaigns up and running while learning about the competitive landscape that other marketing initiatives get put on the back burner.
That’s where we come in.
So What Exactly Is Inbound Marketing?
It’s a way to attract strangers of your brand to your site by using blogs and social media to provide them with a high quality and relevant piece of content to peak their interest.
Then they become visitors to your site at which time you can convert them with clear calls to action and forms on relevant, interesting landing pages.
Once they submit their contact information via your form, you have a lead that you can follow up with and convert to a prospect that you can contact using your email drip campaign.
Then you can hopefully close your new prospect as you impress them with your sales expertise!
Finally, you can follow up with great customer service to make sure your new customer is happy and hopefully refers you to someone else.
Should I Be Doing Inbound Marketing?
Yes! If you don’t start an inbound marketing campaign after reading this blog, then I have failed you as a marketer. More and more businesses are integrating inbound marketing.
It’s not the latest trend that will fizzle out, but rather the start of an integral piece of your ongoing marketing strategy. According to Search Engine Journal, inbound leads cost 60% less than outbound leads! That’s pretty amazing considering the rise in costs of paid search ads.
Additionally, Content Plus published that blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links. Think of the SEO value you can gain from producing some awesome blogs.
Let me reiterate, yes! You need to be doing this, yesterday!
Do I Need A Big Team To Do Inbound Marketing?
You don’t necessarily have to have a big team but you do need the right talent and skills along with at least 1 person committing time each week to oversee or execute the plan. The amount of time required will depend on how much content you are producing and how quickly you want to see results.
The skills most important to get started include copywriting, at least some basic design skills, the ability to update your website, and social marketing. If you have people on your team with those skills, you have the basics. If you don’t, another option is to have someone on your team oversee the efforts and hire an agency to execute the work .