A Long Break, Inbound Marketing Strategies, Lessons Learned
It has been embarrassingly long since I’ve written. Doesn’t matter what the reason is for the lapse it is just a simple fact that I have not posted in over a year. I was at first tempted to feel badly about this fact, but fortunately I had much going on over the last year and learned quite a bit, most of which is related to inbound marketing strategies. So rather than feel negatively about the layoff I thought that it would make sense to once again grace the digital pages of my long forgotten blog with some lessons learned.
I will begin with inbound marketing strategies, or content marketing. At the time of my last post content marketing was still a somewhat burgeoning field, and there was
some debate over whether or not it even was anything new. In fact it seems as though content marketing as a term is sort of losing ground to inbound marketing. To be sure there remains debate over whether or not the two are different, and to be sure there are nuances to each that make them unique. But looking back on my post entitled what is content marketing, I still believe it accurately reflects the discipline.
As a practitioner of inbound marketing strategies this is one of those topics that, in the last year plus, I have learned quite a bit about. This isn’t however a ‘how to’ post, there is plenty on the web today to help you understand the practice, better apply it to your business, and evaluate the tools and methods that are available today (For the sake of sharing I’ve added a list at the end of this post of resources that are worth checking out.). Rather this is probably an opinion piece. So take it for what it is worth.
The second to last time I wrote about content marketing I shared a dirty little secret about the discipline, inbound marketing takes lots and lots of hands on effort. (NOTE: another example of ‘leranings’ interchanging inbound and content here on purpose for some tacit SEO considerations – not that I feel I need to optimize this post, but it is worth adhering to good habits). This is truer today than it was when I wrote it. The simple fact of the matter is inbound marketing strategies do not work unless there is a complete commitment to them. It is sort of like a new year’s resolution to exercise more. This resolution will be put aside by no later than mid February if an individual is not completely committed to not just exercising, but committed to an effort to significantly change a major part of their lifestyle. Content marketing and Inbound marketing is that significant a change. It simply does not work without commitment.
Let’s stay with that thought for a moment (anther note: I think that at this point my return to writing here is mostly for yours truly – so I’m going to be a little more self indulgent than I would normally be. . .this will result in a fairly ‘stream of consciousness ‘ sort of style. If you dig it . . .cool. . .if you don’t. . well no big deal thanks for making it this far). Commitment and culture are probably the two most critical aspects to successful inbound marketing. It is a religion and everyone in the organization has to be baptized in the religion, and this baptism must flow from the top down. If content marketing or inbound marketing is just the idea of the few and not integrated completely with the goal of increasing sales opportunity and ultimately more revenue, it will help little.
Leadership has to see the benefit of not just driving incoming demand, but the value in using inbound marketing strategy to propel them to a new stratosphere of existence. One in which the story of the company, the story of the value the company brings to its customers or clients, the story of the lasting impact that the company’s existence has upon the ecosystem in which it operates, and the personal stories of those that have benefited far beyond the obvious by having interaction with the company punctuates and defines the very essence of company itself.
The point is that inbound marketing strategies are not just throw up and they’ll show up methods that magically take yesterday’s hard copy marketing brochures and turn them into downloadable content that gives you leads that you’ll be able to convert tomorrow. Inbound marketing strategies are the next step in the very maturity of the marketing discipline. The maturity itself is driven by the ongoing and rapid change of digital and social communications. Buying behaviors are different today then they were even five years ago, and they’ll be different in another five years then they are today. Content is the only thing that will allow an organization to keep pace with that change. Dedication to an educational transparency is the foundation on which proper inbound marketing strategies must exist. If you are not prepared to be an educator or transparency you will never benefit from inbound marketing.
So there you have it, first entry in a long long time. I think that I’ll stay with this topic for a bit because it is one of the areas in which I’ve learned the most, and have had the most successes along with my fair share of lesson learning failures. In the meantime I promised some resources on Inbound marketing. Enjoy.
Marcus Sheridan The Sales Lion: I don’t know Marcus but I’ve talked to him a couple of times. He is a big inbound marketing evangelist, a Hubspot user once selling fiberglass pools and now making his living helping companies adopt inbound marketing strategies. Including Marcus here because I feel that he more than anyone I’ve come across clearly articulates the harsh realities of how inbound works and why it doesn’t work. His blog post generated eBook “Inbound and Content Marketing Made Easy” is worth the read, and contains some very useful tactical tips on how to focus and generate content. In addition to all of this I’ve found Marcus to be very open to conversation so if you have questions and you reach out to him odds are you’ll hear back.
David Wells: Inbound Now: I met David when he was an Inbound Marketing consultant for Hubspot. He has a decidedly technical slant and has since left Hubspot to pursues his own dream of consulting glory. His specialty is Wordpress but his expertise far exceeds that specialty. What is great about David’s work is that it is much more pragmatic than a good majority of the ‘write it and they will come’ crowd. He takes the importance of small details, like how to easily find icons that can be quickly modified via photoshop to match your site’s look and feel in order to create more compelling calls to action, and injects them into the standard process of executing an inbound marketing strategy. Check his blog out, it always has good content and his apps, most free, will add value to an inbound marketing strategy.
Hubspot: Hubspot’s blog is one of the best resources for inbound marketing. One caveat, as they grow and use their own ideology probably 65% of their posts are remedially targeted towards their entry level buyer. So just be forewarned that some of what you’ll find there feels a little tired and obvious. That said they do tag their posts with introductory, intermediate, and advanced settings so that should help you navigate. Hubspot practices what they preach, their founders built the company atop the vision of inbound marketing and they are very successful. Their applications are easy to use and help enable an inbound strategy. Their blog is a very valuable source of insight and information. Signup for their alerts and you’ll also get a steady stream of their content offers. Most of which are great, but regardless of their value you will see the Hubspot methodology in action. Don’t want to sign up for their blog alert? Like their FB page , all their offers appear there as well.
SEOMoz Blog: Without a doubt the best SEO resource that I’ve found. SEOMoz provides very useful information on how SEO works, how to practice it, and where it is headed. I don’t read the blog every week but when I’m flummoxed over which element of SEO my small marketing team should focus upon I turn to SEOMoz and almost always find the answer.
Content Marketing Institute: I almost didn’t include CMI mostly because I don’t frequent their blog as often as I do the other resources. So I can’t say that I’ve learned anything directly from them. However I like the way founder Joe Pulizzi, manages the company and has evolved it over time to become a trusted source of information in the industry.
I hope these help you. Feel free to send me any recommendations to add to this list.
