The Biggest Reason Your Inbound Marketing Strategy is Failing

Inbound marketing is a fantastic way to increase visitors to your website and generate leads for your business. But for better or worse, your strategy’s success hinges on your ability to continually publish valuable content. If you cannot do this, your inbound marketing attempts will fail.

Why content matters

If inbound marketing is a house, content creation is the foundation — without it, there’s nothing to build on.

When you don’t have blog posts, whitepapers, webinars, or other kinds of content, it’s difficult to carry out the next steps in your strategy.

• There’s nothing to tweet about
• There’s nothing to share on LinkedIn and/or Facebook
• There’s nothing to encourage visitors’ interaction on your site
• There’s nothing new for search engines to index
• There’s no lead generation mechanism

These are the building blocks of your inbound marketing strategy; not completing them leaves your marketing dead in the water.  

3 steps to getting your strategy on track  

1. Create an editorial calendar (and stick to it)

The hardest part of content generation is getting started. Work with your team to create an editorial calendar, and select one team member to be responsible for seeing that content is published routinely and on time.

2. Share and encourage

Promote the content that you write across your social media platform(s) of choice. Ask people to Share, Re-Tweet, and comment. Thank them when they do so, and respond to as many questions and comments as you can.      

3. Create lead generation offers      

Create a special offer (like a whitepaper or webinar) for which people must give their name and email address in exchange for content. Use a CRM (Customer Management System) like HubSpot, CampaignMonitor, or Salesforce to keep in touch with those who take advantage of your offer. Put people on a nurturing campaign, send them a coupon, or give them a call. Keep them coming back to your website and convince them to become customers.  

Content creation resources  

• Blogs - Set up an RSS feed that pulls in content from your favorite blogs and websites. Whether industry- or hobby-related, they can work as inspiration for creating content for your own website.
• Books - Read a lot of business books? Create a video review and post it on Youtube and your blog, or write an article about a specific concept or topic covered in the book.
• News - What are the latest happenings in your industry? Report the facts and add in your opinions.
• Events - A tradeshow or seminar can provide great content fodder, but what about a choral performance? Connects exist between seemingly unrelated things; find them and write about them.

Ideas for content creation are everywhere. It’s time to start creating.    

Related Links    

• The 5 Characteristics of Compelling Content
• 9 Inbound Marketing Myths and Realities

[Image: hans.gerwitz]