Inbound Marketing Strategy – Steps to Decide if Your Business Is Ready
Inbound marketing strategy is not for every business and it is important to look at your business and your sales process to see if you would truly be ready for an Inbound Marketing strategy. Like most marketing efforts if you go into it with out the level of understanding of what you hope to carry out then you are doomed. Set a plan in motion for you inbound marketing strategy and you will save time and money and you will business will grow.
How to tell if you are ready
A lot of businesses jump into a inbound marketing strategy or some other marketing strategies because their competitors are doing it. This is mistake number one, you need to understand what you hope to accomplish and work to become unique and targeted in your efforts. So how can you tell if you are ready?
Step 1.
Do you understand the concept of a sales lead? Is a sales lead the start of your sales process? If you have an understanding of what a lead is and the process of lead generation and how it fits into your sales process then you can start to think about some sort of inbound marketing strategy. Yes – Go to Step 2 No – You are not ready for Inbound Marketing.
If you do not understand a sales lead and how it fits in your sales process you either do not need leads for sales or you need to do some more research. So if you still think you might be able to get some value from a inbound marketing strategy do some research and planning around your sales process. Once done then go to Step 2.
Step 2.
Do you have an idea of your cost to maintain your public face? This includes your branding, offline marketing, current online marketing, signage, customer service etc. The cost it takes to just let people know who you are. Do you know this cost? If you yes then to step 3, if No then get some research done and compile the data first.
Understanding what a sale costs is as important as understanding the sales process. If you do not know what it take to support the public face of your business you will not be able to properly analyze the data from your inbound marketing strategy. Look at your costs to maintain this public face it does not have to be an exact science to gauge your ROI on a inbound marketing strategy, however you will need the data to optimize your efforts. Once done then go to Step 3.
Step 3.
Now you have an idea of your public face costs we can relate that to your lead acquisition cost. This is looking at your typical sale and then applying the data from step 2 to give you a cost per lead. This it what it costs you to begin the sales process with your current strategy. If you have this you are ready to look at an Inbound Marketing strategy for your business.
The goal for Inbound Marketing is to cut this lead acquisition cost. The two ways this is accomplished with a inbound marketing strategy is by reducing some of your public face costs from step 2 or by increasing your volume of leads without increasing your costs. This is why a inbound marketing strategy has such a powerful ROI.
