Inbound Marketing: It Takes Time or Money
Inbound marketing is hard. But, it’s not hard because you need to be a genius to understand it (come on, it’s not rocket science). The concepts are pretty clear - create remarkable content, optimize it for the search engines, promote it to your audience, and create opportunities for conversions with compelling offers, then analyze and repeat. It’s hard because it takes time, energy and creativity.
The number one complaint I hear from marketers is, “I don’t have time to do it.” My response - “well, I guess your company just doesn’t need any more leads then.” That usually gets their attention, but they still say they don’t have time. So what are these marketers doing? They’re attending trade shows, planning events, writing press releases, and buying ad space - activities that aren’t helping their bottom line. Marketing has often been thought of as an expense for most companies, when in reality, it should be a revenue generating department.
So, my advice to marketers who say they don’t have time for inbound marketing - outsource. Gone are the days when a marketer can work for a company who creates a product they know nothing about. Marketers need to be content creation factories. You know what I’m talking about…you’ve seen those marketers who work for silicon chip manufacturers or engineering firms or biotech companies who have no idea what their company actually does. How can they be thought leaders? How can they create remarkable content?
The answer is, they can’t. So they should find others who can and then start learning. Learn by reading blogs, marketing books, attending webinars, downloading whitepapers and articles. Become an inbound marketing expert because your job and your company depend on it.
Social Media for B2B Lead Generation Takeaways
Last night I attended another SVAMA event - Social Media for B2B Lead Generation. HubSpot CEO, Brian Halligan, started off the discussion with Mike Linton, former CMO at eBay, and Zack Urlocker, of MySQL now Sun/Oracle. The panel was moderated by Lilia Sherman, author of 42 Rules for Growing Enterprise Revenue, and Managing Director of The Shirman Group.
One key theme of the night that emerged was around content creation. For B2B companies this is crucial for social media engagement so that you can entice your audience back to your website, but not try to push them with a hard sell.
They key takeaways were:
Always test - At Sun/Oracle Zack found that calling something a “guide” vs. a “whitepaper” resulted in more leads.
Be part of the community, but don’t manage it - Mike says that once he helped create an eBay community, he had to step back and just be a member. If he tried to control it, he would fail and members would fight back.
Start a content creation machine at your company - Brian wants all companies to go out and start creating content, even if you sell left-handed monkey wrenches. At HubSpot, we create videos, whitepapers, guides, e-Books, webinars, presentations, and blog articles.
