Ten years ago, a marketer’s main focus was on outbound, “forced” marketing with quick reward. They would buy a newspaper ad and see a quick return when customers would come in with the ad cut out, quick gratification on their marketing efforts.
Now days, the typical business starts a facebook or twitter page and a blog on their website. Initially while the business is still excited about these new marketing features, there is some dedicated time put into their inbound marketing efforts. However, as time goes on, less and less time is dedicated to their blog and social networks and soon they all become stale and stagnant. For many, this is because there is no immediate business return from these types of marketing efforts so business owners get frustrated and dedicate their time elsewhere. Or they get wrapped up in the day to day and procrastinate about working on inbound marketing.
What these businesses are missing out on is the long term benefits of inbound marketing which significantly outweigh the ROI on any short term outbound marketing efforts. These long term benefits will never be seen by the business unless they can remain patient, controlled and focused on a long term marketing plan. This is where the mindset shift needs to take place and if it doesn’t, the business is setting their marketing up for failure.
The midset shift happens when a business owner stops focusing on such short term, quick reward outbound marketing and views the time and effort they are putting into their blogs social media as an investment in their business. With each blog post and each relationship they are creating on social media, they are building their brand, services and products little by little. Over time, all the blog content and relationships build up and you will have a monster marketing machine with a great deal of brand loyalty and engaged followers to market your business to. Once this moment happens, the ROI you will see on your marketing efforts will put all the short term, traditional marketing activities to shame.
Now, to set the record straight, I’m not advocating stopping all the outbound traditional marketing efforts. I am, however, suggesting that they take a supplemental role so you can make inbound marketing your main objective. Outbound marketing has it’s time and place and can be very beneficial for certain goals, but if your goal is long term business growth, inbound marketing is king. This also requires you to set dedicated time aside for inbound marketing techniques and stay calm, patient and committed to “investing” this time into your business. You would be surprised, you might see return quicker than you think.
Have you shifted your mindset in your business?
