One of the best features of inbound marketing is the fact that it lives entirely online. That means making changes is cheap and easy, because all it takes is changing some lines of code – or editing the page in a CMS system like the HubSpot COS – and you can quickly transform any site page. It’s practically instantaneous.
However, just because it’s an instantaneous platform doesn’t mean you’re going to get instantaneous results. This is why it’s important to assess why exactly your inbound marketing strategy is not working.
It doesn’t happen in a week, or month, or…
In fact, your early results for inbound marketing are probably going to be nonexistent. Just because your site is online and ready for visitors doesn’t mean anyone else has noticed. That’s not how this game is played.
Every web user and website has an online footprint; basically, a categorization for where you fit in the digital world. When your website launches, its digital footprint will be pretty small and undefined. If you want that footprint to grow, you must keep posting new content on a regular basis and promote that content.
When you do that, Google takes notice with its web crawler and adjusts its perception of you. And Google’s perception means everything: the search giant still controls 67 percent of the search market, which dwarfs every competitor. If you want your site to become more relevant, you need Google to think highly of it.
Time is part of the inbound marketing equation
Inbound marketing isn’t designed to give you an immediate spike. The strategy is more akin to planting some tree seeds, and then watching the tree grow and spread its branches as the months go by.
For instance, one of the tenets of inbound marketing is to ensure your customers are very happy, so they can become promoters of your business. These promoters will boost your site’s online relevance, as well as recommend you to family and friends. And if you connect with them via social media, they may promote you to their social media audience as well, expanding your reach even further.
So how can I tell if this is going to work?
Again, your early results aren’t going to be pretty, but you should start to see your numbers slowly rise. As long as traffic and your number of leads continue to grow, even if it’s at a snail’s pace, you’re on the right track. There will be an occasional month where your business appears to backslide and the numbers drop, but those months are virtually always followed by a big jump back up. As long as you don’t see continuous declines in your numbers that last for longer than a month, you’re on the right track.
Despite the difficulty, try to remain patient. It may be six months or more before you start to see inbound marketing pay big dividends; but it will most certainly happen with time.
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