As outbound marketing has begun being pushed out of the marketing world and replaced with new strategies, inbound marketing has become an essential part of most companies.  Inbound marketing is a great way to sell your product and get your company involved in the online community.  It is cheaper than outbound marketing and has proven very successful.  With this being said, inbound marketing can only be as effective as your company makes it and many companies struggle with the same problems.  Here is a list of seven common inbound marketing mistakes that companies make: 

• No strategy

Before you get started with your new marketing campaign you must have a strategy no matter how obvious that sounds!  Your company must be organized and know what you want to achieve.  You wont successfully achieve any goals unless you create them first. Additionally, it is also essential that you use a timeline.  This will help keep things organized and make sure you stay on schedule and don’t fall behind. 

• Disregarding numbers

Inbound marketing can be more confusing then you think.  There is a science behind it and it is important your company understands this and checks their performance regularly.  Numbers are essential and your company needs to make sure they are constantly looking to see their results to see if they have generated leads and/or sales.

• Not staying up to date

The online world is one that changes very quickly, in fact every second, and it is a difficult community to catch up on once you fall behind.  You are constantly seeing changes to the online community and new features and layouts added to social media pages.  Inbound marketing requires a lot of attention and at times can be complicated, but it is important that you take the time to constantly stay updated.  This will show your clients that you are organized and always up to date with the newest revises. 

• Focusing on only one marketing tool

There are a lot of essential aspects to creating and maintain a successful inbound marketing campaign and it is important that you don’t get stuck get focusing on one.  Landing pages, CTA’s, emails, blogs, and social media pages are just some of the marketing tools you need to make sure your company is utilizing.  One easy aspect to get stuck focusing on is Google.  Obviously Google is an important aspect to your campaigns success, but it is important you utilize other things like your social media pages to continue to direct customers to your blog and website.  Additionally, make sure you include CTA’s as they provide customers with something that allows them to further engage with your company. 

• Instant gratification

You’d be crazy if you didn’t want to see fast results that bring in quick money, but this isn’t Disney World and you can’t buy a fast pass to skip the wait.  Inbound marketing requires patience and consistent work.  You need to gradually continue to build your marketing tools and it is not something that can happen all at once. With your blog, you need to post often and consistently in order to really build up an audience as you cant expect to have hundreds of readers after your first post.

• No test runs

Nothing would be more humiliating than sending a bad link out to all your clients or potential clients.  There’s no point in putting in all your hard work if you aren’t going to run tests before you send your links out to customers.  This is a simple step that is easily fixable and is something you definitely don’t want to loose prospective clients over. 

• Inconsistency

Multiple personality disorder? Fix it.  You don’t want to send your clients mixed signals and confuse them by being all over the place. Make sure all your campaigns are consistent and create the right image your want to represent your company.  With this being said, you need to make sure that you can still be flexible with your clients and that they still know you are capable of working in a lot of different directions.  

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