As time goes by, more and more companies of all sizes are implementing an inbound marketing strategy. They’ve researched inbound stats like these, created their plan of attack, and embarked on a complete change in the way they get the word out about their businesses. Change isn’t easy, but sometimes the cost of inaction is greater than the effort needed to make that change. Inbound marketing is one of those changes that businesses are finding to be worth it. Here are 9 inbound marketing statistics that will make you wonder why you haven’t started implementing inbound marketing yet.

Companies are 3x as likely to see higher ROI on inbound marketing campaigns than on outbound, regardless of size and type of business. source

68% of online buyers will spend considerable time reading content published by a brand they are interested in. source

Marketers who check their metrics are 3x+ more likely to achieve positive ROI. source

Companies that blog generate 67% more leaders per month than those that don’t. source

8 out of 10 people identify themselves as blog readers. source

Inbound leads cost 61% lower than outbound leads. source

80% of business decision-makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus in an advertisement. source

84% of 25 to 34 year olds have left a website because of intrusive or irrelevant advertising. source

95% of those who opt into email messages from brands find these messages somewhat or very useful. source

As marketing director, you’ve done your research. You are certain that inbound is the best way to market your company going forward. But even after you’ve had conversations, presentations, and even built excitement amongst your colleagues, you’re still spending your time creating magazine ads and laying out proposals. Why is inbound marketing buy-in so hard to accomplish? From my own experience, here are a few reasons I’ve seen.

Ugh, change.

First and foremost, change is hard. Doing something new requires vulnerability. You need to be a novice at something before you can be advanced, and being a novice kind of sucks. A company will put off a change as long as they can. And they can put it off until the alternative to change becomes the worse option.

Fear of Transparency

Inbound marketing is transparent. It means a brand will need to be constantly communicating with their audience. There is a lot of fear centered around showing too much, or saying the wrong thing, and getting a negative reaction.

A lot of businesses are afraid to show themselves wholeheartedly.

What happens if someone leaves a negative comment? What if we didn’t do enough research before posting something? What if we get negative reviews? What if they hate the real us?

Complete accountability

With a complete inbound marketing strategy, you have solid results that are clear as day. You can see what is working and what’s not, and that could mean waving the white flag on a campaign you’ve worked really hard on. If it’s not working, you have the evidence to let it go, but that means admitting it didn’t work the way you had expected it to.

Lack of Resources

When you start with inbound marketing, positions may change, or you may need to hire different types of employees to fill the needs of the strategy. This means a lot of leg work for the company that they may not be too thrilled about.

So how do you get past all this?

Understand your company.

To make a decision like this, you really need to have a handle on your company’s financials. You need to know how they’ve brought in sales in the past. What has worked, what hasn’t worked, and why. You also need to know what your company’s goals are, and most importantly, why they’ve set those goals. This takes a solid amount of trust from your company’s leaders, but it’s a necessity for anyone who is in charge of marketing, no matter their strategy.

Do your homework.

Learn as much as you can about inbound and how it works. There are tons of resources that give solid statistics about inbound. Go further and read case studies and find out how an organization earned their success.

Don’t got it alone.

If you can find an inbound agency that you trust, don’t be afraid to collaborate with them. Get your leaders in a room for a workshop with the inbound agency. The agency will be seen as an outsider and marketing expert, and could get some points across that you haven’t been able to (even though you’ve been telling them for months).

Don’t just tell them, show them.

If you have the resources, run a small scale inbound campaign and track your results. Something as simple as an email marketing campaign with tracked results can really paint a picture for what is possible. Numbers don’t lie. Show them what it would look like if the results you got from your small scale campaign were the same for every marketing action your company takes.

Research your competitors.

Download a browser extension called Ghostery, and see who is already doing inbound among your competitors. Look for applications like HubSpot, Pardot, Infusionsoft, and Marketo. If there are others, research them to gain insight on the tactics they are using. Beating out competitors can be the ultimate motivator.

Let them realize it – don’t drill it into them.

Don’t become a broken record. If you find yourself repeating your inbound pitch over and over, you need to find another way. Ask questions, uncover their goals and their struggles, and lead them to inbound as the answer.

There are lots of statistics that show Inbound Marketing as more effective and a better investment than traditional marketing. Still, a lot of businesses have a hard time changing their ways. I get it, change is hard. But this change is so worth it. Let’s take a look at the difference between the old way of marketing (traditional marketing), vs. the new way (inbound marketing).

Old Way: Cold Calling

For salespeople, this is one of the most significant changes they’ll see when their company jumps into inbound marketing. In the past, marketing has been in charge of branding and messaging, and not gathering leads. The sales person would do their own prospecting, based on company size, location, industry, and position. And it would be up to them to figure out how to make contact. Cold calling, of course, is a popular way to do that. As buyers continue to trust salespeople less and less, cold calling works less often than it once did. So sales people have to get used to lots of rejection.

New Way: Following up with leads

As an inbound marketing strategy picks up steam, a salesperson will have more leads to follow up with and to nurture, and less prospecting and cold calling to do. As your content grows, and your brand becomes a recognizable thought leader, more qualified leads will seek you out. Not only will the sales team receive leads with contact info, but they also have information as to what type of content the lead is interested in. When you do contact prospects cold, it will be easier to make contact since they may have already heard of you and respect your brand.

Old way: Free consulting to close the sale

Some sales cycles can be really long. It usually depends on the price tag associated with the sale, and the amount of education needed to close. Sales people often have to take on the role of educator once their prospect becomes a lead. This not only means teaching the lead about your product, but also showing them how they can apply it—which becomes free consulting.

New way: Free content to close the sale

As a salesperson, I want to be doing less educating and more selling. There is nothing wrong with giving people information, but if it takes up valuable time it can become a detriment. When implementing an inbound marketing campaign, you can compile a list of topics that you find yourself educating leads about, and have your marketing team turn them into online content. A prospect has a question about something? Well wouldn’t you know it, we just published a blog post about the exact subject. Write up your answer in an email and let them know they can explore it more at this link. Now, they get their answer, and more, as they poke around and check out all your other content. And you can collect data, and see which topics they are most interested in without them even telling you. Magic.

Old Way: Blanket an area with direct mail

Direct mail used to be a great way to get the word out about your company or product, until everyone started doing it and the term “junk mail” was born. Direct mail can still work, but along with other forms of traditional marketing, it is becoming less effective over time.

New Way: Target your audience with social ads

Social Media has bloomed into an incredible way to reach your target persona. Facebook ads allow you to target people based on their interests and their activity, rather than just their age and income level. You’re no longer guessing, “Well, they are high income earners, so they might ski! Let’s send them this direct mail piece we spent a bunch of money on and pray that we’re right!” Now, you can target someone who has voluntarily listed skiing as one of their interests. And that’s just the basics of social ads, it gets a lot more in depth (and borderline creepy) than that.

Old Way: Guess what your sales will be

The old way of marketing is very hard to measure, especially for small businesses. There is no such thing as an engagement rate for a billboard. The company that places your billboard might tell you it gets x amount of views every day, and you will have no idea if that’s true. The ROI for most traditional methods of marketing and advertising is almost impossible to measure. If you can’t measure any data you can’t project your sales based on your efforts.

New Way: Project sales based on data

Now that your inbound strategy is showing you solid results and you can equate your marketing efforts to your sales, you’ll be able to forecast what’s to come more effectively. Statistics like Cost per Customer Acquisition and Leads to Sales Ratios will become your best friends. No more stress wondering where your company will be 6 months from now. As long as you put the work in, you know where you’ll be.

Old Way: Trade Shows and Networking events

Face to face networking is great. Put in a few hours every week at an event in your area, come away with some business cards and maybe even some meetings booked. Closing rates are high, but you can only meet so many people. Every event takes a lot of energy, and if you have no follow up, there’s no way of building on what you’ve already put in to grow your results. Sure you can collect email addresses, but a lot of attendees won’t give theirs up (because they don’t want spam). Every time you break down a trade show booth, you’re back at where you started.

New Way: Linkedin Groups and Webinars

Meeting and connecting with people online give you an ongoing line of communication with them. Want to join my free webinar? Give us your email to register. Start a Linkedin or Facebook group and you have an easy way to send a message and start a conversation. The content you post or talk about will help you earn their trust, so they won’t run away (like they do at a trade show when you make eye contact with them).

Old Way: Looking at marketing as arts & crafts.

In the past, sales and marketing were two different worlds. Sales was data driven and focused on closing, while marketing was creating images and messaging that enticed their target audience. Sales looked at marketing as something that wasn’t completely necessary as long as the sales team was solid. And marketing didn’t have an data to prove them wrong.

New Way: Looking at marketing as an extension of your sales team.

Now, sales and marketing work together to get a lead and close a sale. Sales relies on marketing for key information on a lead that helps them shorten their sales cycle and close more sales. Marketing relies on sales for key information about what their prospects and leads are struggling with, so they can create great content. One needs the other in order to succeed.

As traditional marketing continues to become less and less effective, inbound marketing becomes more and more crucial for business growth, and even survival.

In order for a content marketing team to create great content, they need to understand the problems prospects are having.
 
If marketing does not have access to the problems that the sales department deals with from day to day, they are going to be coming up with topics out of thin air. That’s how you end up with content that sits in a sea of sameness, and doesn’t really connect with your audience.
 
Your prospects, leads and customers are unique. Their problems are unique. And they are the best source for creating unique content. Unique content is the key to success in content marketing. Therefore, your prospects, leads, and customers are the key to success in content marketing. Your marketing team needs access to the information your sales team deals with on a daily basis. They need to communicate.
 
Having access to marketing information also helps out the sales team immensely. Having content for leads to consume, and knowing which content they have consumed, means the sales team can do less educating and more selling.
 
You need to set up a system to harbor communication between sales and marketing. The alignment between these two departments is known as “smarketing,” and it is imperative for content marketing success. Here are some ideas that can help.

Have sales and marketing meet on a regular basis.

Make sure there is a time and place for marketing and sales to meet every week to go over the sales funnel. They can brainstorm ways to move a prospect down the funnel, or think about how they are going to close a deal based on the content they’ve consumed. Sales can also discuss the conversations they have with leads, so marketing can learn about their problems and come up with the right content that can help solve those problems.

Make sure they are working in close quarters.

They don’t have to be on top of each other, but it makes sense to have their work days intertwined. This will help encourage relationships between the departments and make it easier for them to communicate when they need to. It’s hard to learn about a salesperson’s prospects when they work from home all week long. It can be done, but if you have them in close proximity of each other it will help.

Use tools that encourage communication, that both departments have access to.

Simple tools like Slack can open up communication between sales and marketing. It’s also a good idea to make sure the CRM the sales team uses can link up with the marketing software the marketing team uses. HubSpot’s marketing platform and CRM allow leads to seamlessly travel from one to the other, so there’s no chance of dropping the ball.

Make sure they understand why this is so important.

This shouldn’t be too hard once the engine is humming. When there’s a big sales win, have a recap of what made this a success. What was the buyer’s journey like from start to finish? When sales and marketing work well together, you should be able to see where each department had a big part in converting the customer.
 
There needs to be more than just a hand off between marketing and sales when it comes to a lead. With the right communication systems in place, these two departments can help each other through every stage of the buyer’s journey.

With the online tools available today, non-profits have a lot at their fingertips that can help them create the perfect campaign. Using email marketing, social media, and blog content, there are so many ways to get your message out there and to encourage your audience to act.

Landing pages are an integral piece of every online campaign. The landing page is where the magic happens. It’s where a visitor becomes a contact, and/or a contact becomes a donor. Here are some ways to make sure your non-profit landing pages are successful every time.

1. Focus on one main goal

A landing page should be free from anything distracting the user from the one main goal. Get rid of your menu items or any links that could lead them astray.

2. Make an impact

Have a catchy headline and compelling images that make the user want to stick around. Make sure they know where they are, but don’t be afraid to try something new and different.

3. Have everything in one place

The story, information about where the money will go, and the call to action should all be on the page so the user doesn’t have to jump around at all during their journey. If you can collect payment on the same page, that’s great. But if you have to go to an external secure page, make sure it’s as simple as possible.

4. Take out anything unnecessary

Keep all the copy short and sweet. Use bullet points or small paragraphs. Visitors on average will read 20% of the copy on any giving web page, so make yours easy to skim. When revising your copy, continue to ask yourself, “Does this really need to be here?”

5. Have a clear call to action

Your call to action should tell your user what to do next. Don’t ever assume they know the next step. Use a color that stands out and make the copy time-based.

6. Test your messaging

Try some A/B testing for your copy and your images. This kind of testing can go a long way in understanding your target personas going forward.

If you own a small business that doesn’t have the budget to outsource your marketing or hire someone to do it, you have to do it yourself. No questions asked. You won’t survive without it. Not having a marketing budget is not an excuse for not doing any marketing.

You’re going to have to put a good amount of effort in if you’re competing with companies that have marketing teams. And if you’re competing with companies that do it themselves just like you, well these marketing skills will help you stand out from the crowd.

Basic HTML

Ok, don’t freak out. Code is not as hard as you think it is. Everyone can learn to code, if they put some time in. Even if you are using a Content Management System like WordPress, there are times when you need to take a look at the code and understand what you’re looking at. The theme you’re using might have limitations, or there could simply be a bug you need to fix.

You don’t really need to know how to code a webpage from scratch, but you should be able to pick out a header tag, an image, and a link when you look in the code view of your site. Other things that are helpful would be knowing how to add paragraphs and breaks so you can make sure your content is formatted in a way that’s easy to read. As I am posting this blog, I’m writing everything in the code view of my WordPress post to ensure that everything comes out exactly the way I want it to. And I am not a programmer.

There are some great resources such as w3 schools , and Codecademy for beginners and advanced coders.

An understanding of SEO

Search Engine Optimization is an absolute necessity in this day and age. There is no such thing as an offline business any more. Just because you don’t get business from your website right now doesn’t mean people aren’t looking for your services on the web. They are. Depending on how savvy your competition is, a little SEO knowledge can go a long way. Moz has a fantastic eBook called The Beginner’s Guide to SEO that you should check out. If you’re using WordPress, there are a few SEO plugins that can help you get started in practicing SEO. The one we recommend most is called Yoast.

Graphic Design Knowledge

You don’t have to be an artist, but if you are creating marketing pieces and you don’t have the budget to hire a designer, an understanding of how graphic design works will take you far. When it comes to printing you should understand that images should have enough DPI so they don’t come out fuzzy. Also, knowing the difference between a vector file and an image file will make your printer love you. Something as simple as sending over the right file type can save you and your printer time and money. Extra brownie points for understanding the difference between a PMS color, CMYK and RGB. (Honestly, if I was your printer I would send you actual brownies for being my favorite client)

When it comes to designing for the web, a key thing to understand would be which file type to use. There are many different types of raster graphics, and some are better in places than others. Also, understand file size and weight so your images don’t take forever to load.

If you are dead set on creating custom graphics yourself, you really should invest in Adobe Creative Cloud. You can purchase the programs you need for a monthly fee instead of paying for the entire software up front. If you want to look professional, it is so worth it.

For for something a little more plug and play, try Canva. You can create everything from a Facebook header photo to a full blown presentation, and it is so easy to use.

Writing Skills

If you’re worried about spelling and grammar, check out grammarly. It’s a free app that corrects your writing, but it’s like your regular spellcheck on steroids.

To better the the voice and tone of your writing, read and write as much as you can. I find, the more you read engaging content, the better writer you become. If you have someone who can give you feedback on your writing before it’s published, that is always helpful.

Psychology

To influence potential customers to buy your product or service, you need to have a basic understanding of consumer behavior. There are so many great books on this subject that can really change your thinking on marketing and even the selling process.

Inbound Marketing 101

Inbound marketing is taking over when it comes to marketing strategy. It’s less about buying the right ad space and more about creating the right content. HubSpot has so many great resources for anyone to dive into this world. They also have a free Inbound Certification that I highly recommend. Getting started on your Inbound Marketing strategy now will keep you ahead of your competition. If they are already doing inbound, then you have some catching up to do.

Marketing is a huge part of building a business, and it takes a lot of time and energy to bring results.

My advice? Read, study and read some more. If there’s one thing I know about small owning a small business, it’s that you have to know a lot of stuff. Download eBooks, read articles, connect with other business owners and learn from them.

The good news is that after you’ve put all the time in, you’ll have an understanding of what it takes to get it done when you are able to delegate these tasks. This will make you a better leader if you’re hiring someone in house, or will help you choose the perfect marketing partner if you’re outsourcing.

In a small business centric area like New Hampshire, face to face networking is a big part of starting a business. There are plenty of opportunities for anyone to get involved, attend events, and join networking groups. When we moved to NH from California and planted our roots for our digital agency, face to face networking gave us the boost we needed.
 
We jumped right in and joined the Chamber and a BNI chapter. We met some amazing folks, made great connections and lasting friendships. We still think of networking as a big part of how we’ve grown, but we found there is a downside.
 
Face to face networking is hard to scale and hard to predict. To scale your referrals you need to spend more time networking, or hire more people to help you network–and you still won’t know what kind of results you’ll get. It’s hard to predict what kind of opportunities you’ll get with face to face networking, because it depends on who is in the room. Networking can bring in great results, but if you rely on networking to bring in the bulk of your business, it can be risky.

What would happen if tomorrow you got sick, injured, or simply burnt out and had to stop networking for a while? Would your business survive? Or would those referrals simply stop because your physical presence wasn’t there to receive them?

Earlier this year, I got burnt out from too much networking. Naturally an introvert, it took a lot of energy for me to be out in front of people for hours every week. I had lost my oomph and I needed a change. And it was scary.
 
Thankfully, we had started an inbound marketing strategy for our agency, and had built a marketing funnel through our online presence. With blog posts, calls to action, landing pages, email marketing, and a system to back it all up, we had leads coming in that had found us on their own. I could make changes to our strategy, try different things and put in the effort we needed to keep our sales up, all during normal business hours.

Hitting our Target

With our new strategy we have more control over the types of leads we have coming in. When you network with a group, the referrals you receive are usually the people and businesses that your group members already know. So if you are looking for businesses that are outside of their network, it gets really difficult.

Now, we tailor our messages to the types of personas we know will benefit from our services. We focus on the type of persona that we are looking for, and create their buyer’s journey with content. The leads we have coming in through our inbound marketing strategy are people we would have never met through networking, simply because they aren’t within the circles we formerly networked with.

Perfecting our Formula

At the start of each month, we take a look at our efforts and the results from the month prior. The three main categories we look at are traffic, leads, and sales. The more we blog, the more traffic we tend to get. As the quality of our content increases, so will the quality of our leads. And the more we improve our inbound sales process, the more sales we close. By looking at solid numbers, we have more control over how we perform.
 
We use to say things like, “Oh, well everyone is on vacation this month so that’s probably why our sales are down.” Now we say, “We need to focus on taking better advantage of our traffic by improving our Calls to Action.” or “Let’s write more blogs this month and see how that changes things.”
 
With our inbound strategy, leads and sales is less of a guessing game, and we know that the amount of effort and thought we put into our strategy will directly correlate to the outcome.

Networking is Still Important

Of course we haven’t given up on networking completely. We still get some of our best leads through our networks, but we no longer rely on it for the majority of our business.
 
We’ve taken control of our marketing funnel and turned it into something scalable, and we’re so happy we did.

While some symbols and design elements have become intuitive for users, your visitor does not always know what to do next. It’s up to you to tell them what to do, and why they should do it. A key piece of your inbound marketing strategy is an effective Call to Action.

An effective Call to Action should be in clear sight on a webpage. They should be bigger and bolder that the other elements on your page without it taking over completely. Don’t compromise good design to make your CTA stand out.

1. Consider the colors of your CTA.

It should be a color that stands out and stimulates action, but still looks like it belongs there.
 

2. Tell them what they’re getting with clear and concise copy.

A thorough CTA that leads to an offer should be descriptive. Make the messaging about them and why they will benefit by clicking.
 

3. Make it look clickable.

Create a hover effect for your CTA so your visitors understand it’s a button that should be clicked.
 

  

4. Test it out.

Try some A/B testing with different colors, copy and position on the page. The data could provide some insight on how your audience behaves.
 

5. Place them where it makes sense.

You don’t want CTAs everywhere on your website. Take a step back and act like a website visitor. When will they be most interested in your offer? After they read a blog? Once they’ve gone over your services?
 

6. Understand which CTAs should go on which pages.

Segment your offers into Top of the Funnel (eBooks, free downloads), Middle of the Funnel offers (request a quote, free trial). Your Top of the Funnel offer CTAs should go on top level pages that have a lot of page views, while the Middle of the Funnel offer CTAs should appear on pages the user has to do a little bit of digging to find.
 
Take a look at your website from the user’s perspective and find some places where a CTA is needed. By adding an effective Call to Action, you could see your lead generation results improve right away.

A while back (pre-HubSpot) we developed a series of landing pages for a client. The offers that were featured with these pages were aligned with a direct mail campaign they had been sending out over the past several months. These offers were geared towards trying to get people in the door, or what I like to call “finish line” offers. While they worked well in print format because they were sent to the same house multiple times, they gave us some problems in their inbound marketing strategy.

The biggest problem

Prospects would fill out the form, and never respond to any further interaction. People on social media would see the word “Free” and instinctively go through the steps that were needed to get that free thing. They didn’t realize that they needed to come into the office to get that free thing. They just weren’t ready for that kind of commitment.
 
The offer was a free consultation for a potentially life changing procedure. A good number people who saw the offer on social media liked the idea of getting a free consultation, but they weren’t quite ready to drive their butts to the practice, or even pick up the phone when they called.

What Would You Do?

When you’re creating your inbound marketing funnel, think about your own behaviors. You fill out a form so you can download something for free. A day later, someone calls or emails you about it. How do you react? It sort of seems like someone you just met is asking you to marry them, and you probably can’t run away fast enough.
 
If you’re selling a big ticket item, or anything that requires research before people buy, their first touch with your brand should be just an introduction. Then, you can keep in touch with some charming information—but not every day. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. But don’t disappear. Don’t ask them to take the next step until they’ve given you the right signals. And make sure to listen to them. —See how confusing this is? This is why inbound marketing is a lot like dating.
 
If you want to find the right partner, or customer, you’re going to have to put the time in and build your inbound marketing funnel the right way. Don’t get discouraged. Focus on yourself for once. When it’s ready, the right customers will just drop into your lap.