How Much Work is Inbound Marketing?

Like most questions in the business world — or make that life in general — the answer to “how much work is inbound marketing” is “it depends.” There are 3 main reasons for this, which we explore below.

Current State

Firstly, it depends on the current state of your inbound marketing. If you have a solid infrastructure, then it’ll take less work to get things optimized and updated. Conversely, if your infrastructure isn’t all that structured — which is the case with most businesses — then it’s going to take some hard work and heavy lifting to get things up-to-speed.

Goals, Requirements and Timeline

Secondly, it depends on what you want to achieve. For example, if your sales reps are spending an excessive amount of time trying — and invariably failing — to nurture “lookiloos” (i.e. obsessive window shoppers), then you want inbound marketing to populate the pipeline with qualified leads. Or if your website isn’t getting enough traffic — or, more commonly, if the vast majority of visitors are bouncing away after a minute or two — then you want inbound marketing to increase time-on-site and foster micro-conversions. There are dozens of other viable, strategic inbound marketing goals. The amount of work depends on what you want to do, and how quickly you want (or need) to get there.

Capacity

Capacity is probably the most overlooked factor when businesses try and estimate how much work inbound marketing is. This is because not all resources are created equal.

For example, the average person who has a flat tire needs anywhere from 30-60 minutes to change it (and some even longer). However, a mechanic who has changed more tires than he or she can remember will typically have everything done in 10 minutes, and what’s more, will do the work at a much higher quality standard (i.e. all of the little but important details will be covered).

The same truth applies to inbound marketing. Resources without experience in this area — i.e. it’s not what they do for a living — are always going to take longer than specialists. For example, someone who has little or no experience with AdWords may need 75-100 hours to do all the following when creating a campaign from scratch:

conduct strategic keyword research
conduct buyer persona research
create targeted online ads and associate them with keywords/landing pages
ensure that online adds incorporate all suitable elements (such as ad extensions, dynamic keyword insertion, etc.)
conduct A/B testing to optimize performance and reduce spend

However, a specialist who is AdWords certified, and who knows the in’s and out’s of pay-per-click advertising, may need 30-50 hours to do all of the above — and the ROI will be significantly better.

What’s more, AdWords — or any other kind of PPC program — is just one piece of the inbound marketing puzzle. Others include:

content creation (web copy, blogs, newsletters, off-site articles, ebooks, reports, white papers, social media content, etc.)
web development (ensuring that all pages look right and load properly across browsers and devices)
graphic design (ensuring that all assets look professional and are suitably branded)
SEO (conducting keyword research and integrating insights into on-page and off-page content)
social media management (ensuring that the business is represented on all relevant social platforms, and regularly populated with fresh content)
market research (identifying all relevant buyer personas, and updating profiles accordingly as new information is discovered)
tracking and analytics (monitoring a full range of metrics and optimizing different elements, ranging from keywords used in blogs to CTAs used in AdWords ads)
project management (creating a schedule to incorporate all of the above tasks, and ensuring that the right resources are doing the right work, at the right time)

The Bottom Line

How much work is inbound marketing? A lot. And frankly, it’s much more than most businesses anticipate — simply because it’s not their area of expertise, and they don’t have the in-house resources they need (people and technology) to keep things on-track. Fortunately, that’s where we enter the picture!

The Leap Clixx Advantage

At Leap Clixx, we make inbound marketing affordable, easy and measurably rewarding for our customers across the country. Unlike other agencies, we don’t disappear for weeks on end, and periodically show up when it’s time to sign a contract or submit an invoice. Our commitment to communication is unparalleled, because we WANT our customers to be informed and aware — since that’s how they make better, smarter and more strategic decisions.

To learn more about the Leap Clixx Advantage, contact us today. Your consultation with us is free.::

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