By Laura Hogan, Published November 12, 2014
Not that long ago you were enchanted with your inbound marketing strategies.
Perhaps it seems like only yesterday when the future was wide open and every chance of a charmed marketing plan was yours for the taking. Starry-eyed and optimistic, you believed what you were told about the right way to market your service based business, and you were flying high with expectations that were sure to become realities.
But alas…like all impossible romantic dreams, other things start to take precedence. And when your marketing visions become all too real by failing to produce any noticeable return, the rose-colored glasses fall away and you find that you’re left with nothing but empty promises.
It doesn’t have to be that way though. Your passion for inbound marketing doesn’t have to die.
Re-kindling the spark of affection for your inbound marketing strategies is easy when you know the right moves. And what’s even better, when you take the time to do it right, you’ll learn that you never stopped loving the idea of inbound marketing success, you just need to remember how to keep the passion alive for the long-haul.
But by defining inbound marketing success and understanding where marketing strategies go wrong, you can know the right moves to make… ones that will ensure that your marketing plans work. And naturally, change the disenchantment you feel now into confident reliance on your long-term marketing plan that produces captivating, profitable results.
Defining Inbound Marketing Success
Defining inbound marketing success is a little like preparing for that first date. Every factor must be considered with cool, intelligent deliberation such as where to go (targeted customers), your personality and that of your significant other (current inbound practices and those of others in your industry), and previous bad dates measured with pros and cons detected and enhanced or removed (things that have worked in the past) for your date to go smoothly. When translating that to an inbound marketing strategy, what you come up with are 3 key areas:
- Patience
- Identification
- Measurements.
Patience is a virtue.
Like all true achievement, marketing success requires a reasonable processing time to demonstrate the effectiveness of the strategy.
Have you ever been in a relationship where the other person drops the L-bomb (love) way too soon? It makes things awkward and almost sabotages the relationship, the same concept can be applied to the inbound marketing relationship. Many CEOs and business owners unknowingly sabotage their marketing strategies through impatience. They think that new directions are needed….new advertisements, new mass mailings, new whatever…because they feel that their outreach is stagnant and things aren’t happening fast enough.
But you know that it took hard work and determination to get your business where it is today, and that same patient, deliberate consistency is needed for any marketing strategy to work.
Identifying Your Goals, Challenges, And Timelines
There’s an old saying that carpenters use, “plan your work, work your plan.” It’s obvious, granted, but undeniably true. Any relationship takes time to build trust and an understanding of what the other person needs. This can be true in both personal and work relationships. Jumping into any marketing plan without planning is reckless and extravagant. Success comes from identifying your goals, constructing timelines for completion, and preparing to overcome anticipated challenges to the plan’s effectiveness.
To determine these points for your business, ask yourself:
- What do I want to achieve from my marketing plan? Possibly your goal is to establish a strong pool of possible leads that have high conversion indicators, or maybe you want to see significant increases in new contacts. Whatever your specific goal is, identify it first before you initiate any marketing plan.
- How long should I wait to see improvement? The answer to this question will depend on the type of methods used in your inbound marketing plan and your specific business model. But again, identifying these factors helps to prevent the impatience that can be so detrimental to an effective strategy.
- What challenges do I face? Perhaps you need to educate your targeted consumer about the service you offer. Many B2B businesses have fantastic solutions that could transform industry procedures overnight, IF other companies knew about them. Identifying the challenges to an effective inbound campaign for your business can help you develop the strategies to overcome them.
Measure Everything
With inbound marketing strategies, the ever evolving technology and changing SEO indicators requires consistent monitoring. Each activity must be carefully analyzed to determine which techniques work best with your particular target audience, and the reasons for failure ascertained and suitably adjusted to create positive returns.
But a word of caution, CEO’s shouldn’t get bogged down by the myriad of statistical comparisons…those type of measurements should be monitored by your marketing team. For instance, when it comes to watching television with your significant other you wouldn’t ask your wife to watch Ice Road Truckers just as much as she wouldn’t make you watch Say Yes to the Dress. Different people can focus on different things based on what’s important to them and their role. Business owners and CEOs should focus on the big picture measurements that indicate investment returns and other broad stroke actions.
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