Measuring Blogging and Inbound Marketing

I read a lot and on a recent Hubspot discussion forum (sorry, but you need to have a log in to see the entire discussion and thread) the question was asked “Is Inbound Marketing a Hoax?” The question arose because some people do not seem to see results as quickly as others.

“Inbound Marketing is the only marketing that can be 100% measured.”

Source: Chris Kluis

1. Patience– Results may vary but it takes anywhere from 3 months to 9 months to generate leads. This is in-line with the average time it takes a business to become viable which is 12-36 months. Businesses must be built from the ground up and this takes time. Run away from anyone promising you instant success or money.
2. Write Good Content. Good content rules over fluff as potential leads prefer to make sure you are serious about your website and the information you blog or put on your site. Take the time to do it right.
3. Have Realistic Expectations. Build your budget, your marketing plan from the ground up. This means you know approximately how many leads it takes to generate a sale, what it will take to generate those leads (blogs, promotions, networking, articles and web-traffic). Big ticket sales are harder to get and take more time and more effort.

How many leads does it take?

((Cost of Tools)+(Cost of Employees)+(Cost of Marketing Exp))/(Avg Value of Customer)=(Break-even Customers)

The point is to consider how many customers you need to get to break-even. If it was 10 customers and we expected low conversion rates…

1% Website Conversion Rate
5% Sales Conversion Rate

Break-even Customers/(website conversion rate x sales conversion rate) = Amount of Traffic Required to Generate Break-Even Customers

Or in this example: 20,000 web visitors. The question is how do you generate 20,000 visits a year? That sounds pretty daunting, but the fact is that’s only 80 visits a day.

Source: Chris Kluis

4. Write Consistency. Key is writing on a consistent basis. It does not matter if it is 3 times a week or 5 times a week. Write for magazines, new letters, blogs, discussions, tweets, whitepapers etc. Beware, that if you blog post (or tweet) 10-30 times a day people will become deaf to your message. Do not SPAM people or organizations.
5. Social Media. Make use of other social media in conjunction with Blogging. I make use of LinkedIn, others make use of FB or MySpace. Which you use will depends on the target market you are trying to reach.

And now time for my self promotion (it is ok to do once in a while). Setting forth a plan of action requires planning, evaluation and adjustment on a regular basis. I blog to draw attention to my skills and knowledge. It puts a great big smile on my face when those skills are recognized. From the same article that was referenced above:

” recently hired a very smart full time inbound marketing Specialist (Stuart Smith, you can tell from our blog that his articles are very well researched).

Here’s the thing, I was able to teach him the basics of SEO in 5 days. His ability to write and research are what I valued (that and he was good at utilizing LinkedIn for lead generation)…Stuart is awesome on LinkedIn. In just 3 months we have already been referenced as a top 3 site to go to learn about our subject. Are we the best writers on this subject? No. Are we good? Yes. Do we publish more than anyone else? Yes. Do we promote all our work and try to help people by answering questions? Yes.”

Source: Chris Kluis

At The Entrepreneur’s Advisor, we can help you put in place a proper course of action to understand the importance of inbound marketing. Contact us today to see how we may help you.

Share with us your thoughts on inbound marketing and leave a comment.

Click here for the link to the Hubspot forum. (You must be a hubspot client to view the forum)

If you liked this article you may like

Want a Guest Blog for Your Site?
How to Grow a Micro-enterprise