A few days ago I had a meeting with a client whom we provide a wide range of inbound marketing services for. This was the first real meeting I had with them in which I had to present all of the work we had done in the past 45 days since taking them on. I presented the data in the same way we report to all of our clients:
1. What have we accomplished in the last month?
2. What are we working on currently?
3. What do we have projected to work on in the future?
This three-pronged approach to reporting lets our customers know that we’ve worked hard for them in the previous month, we’re working hard for them currently, and we’ll continue to work hard for them. But… sometimes “what we’ve done” for them is simply not enough.
“Where are the leads?”
“We haven’t closed any deals!”
“We’re spending tons of money and getting nothing!”
These are just some of the questions, concerns, or complaints you might run into as an inbound marketing professional when working with a client who doesn’t truly understand how inbound marketing works.
It’s Hard To Spend Money Today On The Promise Of Long-Term Sales
Sometimes a client will expect that if they spent $3,000 dollars on internet marketing, they should at a minimum receive qualified leads commensurate with the amount of money they spent marketing. It rubs people the wrong way to feel like they’re spending money and not seeing any kind of return. And I get it. I totally get it. After all, who cares if we’re “building an amazing website” or constructing “mind-blowing infographics” if it doesn’t turn into revenue for the company?
So I’ve had to think long and hard about how to properly articulate the value of the work we’re doing for our clients as an inbound marketing agency. How do we help others see the vision and potential behind a legitimate content marketing plan? How do we soften the fact that 3-6 months might go by without a single solid lead when juxtaposed against the thousands of dollars they’ve spent on our campaigns? If your client has never seen the positive results of a long-term content marketing campaign, it’s hard to swallow the investment required in order to start seeing the return.
I have personally seen the results of content marketing, so I know that it works. Others that have seen the results will swear by them as well. If there’s one thing I know in business, it’s that inbound marketing most definitely works. It works slowly… but it works. It works better than anything else I’ve ever seen executed online, as long as it’s committed to long term and done right from the start.
The Depressing, Monotonous Time-Consuming Journey Of Writing Online Content
My first experience with inbound marketing was when I started an outsourced IT company in college. It was hard to get clients because people switched IT providers about as often as they switched their dentist. They had to be in pain, and they had to be very unhappy with their current provider. So… when I started that company, I worried about where I was going to get new leads.
My first clients came as referrals from my dad, a local CPA who was constantly working with small business owners. Eventually, his “little black book” of contacts was exhausted and if I was going to grow… I needed to find clients on my own. I was able to drum up a few more clients through my own network, but eventually, my network became exhausted as well. I was desperate for a lead funnel that would provide us with sustainable growth. I didn’t want to spend my entire life at every lame networking event in our city. I wasn’t into BNI groups or Chamber meetings. I wanted people to come to me, instead of spending my life trying to convince others to let me have a crack at working with them.
So I decided to focus on building content for our website. I wanted to provide valuable information to companies that might be doing research on IT companies in the area. I spent hours on end building this content. 3 months went by. 6 months. 9 months. Nothing. It freaking sucked. No one read the things I wrote. No one called us from the internet. There were no new leads. No new clients aside from a few small referrals from existing clients. I was convinced that I had just completely wasted my time.
But then something interesting happened. Out of the blue, the phone started steadily ringing. One after another, my office would take a call from a random company who “needed help with their IT.” I’d go out there and immediately close the deal. These new leads were closing on the first meeting without much back and forth… and they weren’t small clients. They were good size accounts!
“Where are these people coming from?” I thought to myself.
The first major company that called us needed help right away. I walked into the Controller’s office and noticed a printed piece of paper on his desk that looked like a page from Google’s search results. So I quickly asked him, “Out of curiosity… how’d you happen to find us?”
The controller, pointing to the piece of paper on his desk, said, “You guys came up number one in Google for something I was searching for.”
I kept my cool, but inside I was jumping for joy. “It worked! It worked!” I thought to myself. About 10-12 months later… my content marketing strategy had finally worked. That was the first of many other companies that began to call us as a result of our content that had slowly risen to the top of the search engines. Each of these solid companies were ready and willing to spend $5k-$10k in MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue.) I was pumped, to say the least.
The Mind-Blowing Result Of Creating Consistent Content Online
Within about a year, my IT company grew so fast that I was in a position to sell it and invest in other related startups. It was shocking to see my seemingly insignificant content rise to the top of the search engines to generate massive leads. I decided to turn my attention to building content and helping other companies do what I did with online marketing. I started a personal blog that amassed over 6 million page views in about 2 years. I also began a digital marketing agency to help other people with their inbound marketing. Everything that I’ve done or built has been done without the aid of an outbound sales team. No cold calling. No “do not call” violations or lawsuits. No shady sales people in the room next to me coercing others to use our services. No dilemma of conscience regarding sales tactics. No high turnover to deal with and the associated endless training of sales staff who can’t hit their quota. No $80,000-a-year sales manager. No hassle. Just our phone ringing with a voice on the other end saying “help me!”
The 3 Ways You Are Going To Get New Leads
There are really three ways in which you’re going to get new clients:
1. They’ll come from your own network. Referrals. This is obviously the best type of lead.
2. You have an outbound sales team find new leads on their own.
3. A cold client comes to you asking for your help through inbound marketing or advertising.
Your network and client referrals will always be the gold standard when it comes to leads. That will never change. These referrals will continue to come to you regardless of whether you do any inbound, outbound, or traditional marketing.
I’ve kicked around the idea of trying to build this massive outbound sales team more times than I can count. Each of us has a friend who has told us stories about how their sales floor is just “killing it” every day and they’re going to hit “x” number of millions of dollars overnight. For me, there’s always been something appealing about building a sales floor where everyone is on the phone making 100 calls a day, slamming down deals left and right. But what your friend forgot to tell you was that there is a massive cost associated with all of those sales people. Managing that many sales people – their commissions, their drama, the training, the turnover, the quality of life, and the lawsuits – can really cut into that gross revenue.
Outbound sales teams used to be the norm… and I’m sure they still are in many circumstances… but people are sick of being cold called. We’ve lost our patience with someone interrupting our day with some canned phone script. Plus, the cold callers these days are just plain ruthless and offensive. But… some might say, “a sales rep can call someone and get a sale on the first day.” Not likely… but that is the appeal of outbound dialing. Instant sales.
Inbound marketing takes the opposite approach. It’s a long-term strategy that should be viewed as an investment in a perpetual, low-maintenance sales funnel. Where outbound sales and lead costs might stay the same or increase with time, inbound sales lead costs will diminish over time. The more time that goes by, the lower your cost of acquisition will be. Inbound marketing should be viewed as an investment in the future value of the company and the perpetuity of a solid lead funnel.
Ditch The Sales Floor And Hire Some Cool Writers
If done right, nothing that you do by way of inbound marketing will be a waste of money. Whereas you can waste tons of money trying to build a sales team. If you hired sales people for one year and they don’t pan out, you just spent a lot of money “seeing if they’d work out.” But, if you produce content, or have others produce content for you for that same year, all the content that was created still has the ability to generate leads for many years into the future.
Consider what is more valuable to a company:
100 sales people who sell $10,000,000 dollars worth of services or 100 pieces of high ranking content that sells $10,000,000 dollars worth of services.
The outbound sales person likely gets paid every time they make a sale. But you could produce a piece of content that sells hundreds and thousands of times over without ever needing to pay out a sales person for that sale. Most companies that use outbound selling will have an associated cost attached to every single sale the company makes. Many times, that cost can be hefty.
So if you’ve got $50,000/yr to invest in sales and marketing, I would take a hard look at inbound marketing. Hire a writer or an agency to build content for you instead of throwing a guy in a room with a phone book or direct dialer. The guy on the phone might be able to knock down a few sales during that year. But chances are, those sales won’t stay around long term because those people had to be “sold cold.” (You’re just asking for chargebacks.) But pay someone to build content that gets indexed and ranked in the search engines, and you’ll have people coming to your business for years to come. That content becomes what they call “evergreen.” It provides value to others and sales for you in years to come. When people come to you, you’re able to charge more and those inbound leads seem to stick around for a much longer period of time.
