Important Inbound Marketing Advice: Do it, Outsource, or Fail
It’s time to cut the cord and stop sugar-coating the world of online inbound marketing.
I’m here to tell you to face the music.
You have 3 and only 3 paths you can take in inbound marketing.
There are three distinct paths you can in marketing:
- Do it
- Outsource it
- Or Fail
No more BS. You need to choose one of the three options or one of those options will choose itself for you. (hint: it's the failure one)
Option 1 - Do it
There are countless inbound marketing case studies out there that prove inbound marketing works. It's now indisputable.
At inbound now we (And by “we” I mean me. Inbound Now is a one man show) exclusively market through inbound means.
No cold calling, no hitting the pavement looking for work.
All leads come in via the web due to our content, social, and conversion strategies.
Below is a screenshot from the month of our traffic and lead flow for the month August, our best month yet:
How is it done?
We write 3 blog posts per week on our blog and target specific keywords for each post, we are active in social media (mainly facebook and twitter), and we have set up a number of ways to convert visitors coming into our site that grow our mailing list and keep people coming back.
It didn't happen overnight. This took time and effort. Anything worth doing does.
Here is my question to you: If I can run a profitable business and create content on a regular basis, what is your excuse?
People are great at coming up with excuses on why they don’t have the time to implement inbound marketing, or how it’s too hard, or how their industry is a special snowflake different from all others.
Inbound marketing is too hard? False. Inbound marketing does require effort, this is true but if you aren't willing to put forth the effort, your competitor will.
Playing catch up online sucks. Don’t put yourself in that situation.
Your Industry is special and different from everything else? False.
If you think people aren't using search to research your niche, you are insane.
No time? Okay, you might be right. You can either make the time, or hire someone who does.
If you have gone through every single process you implement in your day to day workflow and cannot find any way to streamline them to save time, then it's time to hire someone.
Go through your existing workflows first, you would be surprised by how many repetitive tasks you can automate with tools, apps, and macros. Google is your friend here.
Option 2 - Outsource It
So you are too busy to take on the world of inbound marketing?
This is the easy way out and probably not the best option for your company but if you must, check out these posts really think about who it is your are going to get to do the work:
- Hiring an Awesome Inbound Marketing Manager
- Hiring an Inbound Marketer
- The Ultimate Guide to Hiring an Inbound Marketing Agency
The reason I usually advise against outsourcing your social media and inbound marketing work is because no agency or consultant is ever going to have the breadth of knowledge that you have about your business.
You are the expert and you should be creating the content. The content that gets produced with be far more valuable than if a staffer at an agency is cobbling together a post via some quick google searches and a wikipedia post.
Try and hire someone into your company, someone who eats, breathes, and dreams in their field. A passionate content creator is going to be a major asset to your brand.
Option 3 - Fail
The third and final option is by far the easiest. You can curl up into the fetal position in the corner and do nothing.
"Why the Internet is just a fad" you say, trying to reassure yourself. Good Luck with that.
The landscape of business has fundamentally changed over the course of the last 10 years via the Internet and "In Google We Trust" (as Marcus Sheridan would say).
If you aren't creating new, search engine optimized content for your site, you are destined to fade into obscurity.