This largely depends on you. Unlike outbound lead generation, clients implementing our online inbound lead generation strategy start seeing great numbers of inbound leads (potential customers) from their target audience within six months, provided they adopt an inbound mindset. The distinction between inbound vs outbound approaches becomes evident in the results.
On the other hand, clients who choose to retain a highly directive, marketing in isolation/ “this is the way we’ve always done it” approach, tend to stunt their own progress, never truly achieving the results they could.
So beware, you can often be the barrier between average and outstanding results, even if this is not immediately obvious to you.
A sales-qualified lead (SQL) is worth ten cold leads. For that reason, implementing an inbound lead generation process that will help you consistently obtain SQLs should be a no-brainer. By utilizing inbound marketing strategies instead of outbound marketing, you can attract and nurture potential customers, resulting in higher quality leads for your business
Learn about sales enablement.
How Strategic is your Digital Marketing Plan?
You can influence your success before you even start inbound marketing with a comprehensive, yet flexible plan that your sales and marketing teams will have to follow on your lead generation campaign. Long gone are the days when your sales team would have to ring every business or potential customer. Despite the fact that this method still might work in certain industries, in this day and age, inbound lead generation strategies are the best way to get quality leads pretty much on demand.
The more comprehensive your plan, the more successful your marketing is likely to be and undoubtedly, the speed at which you get leads will be quicker.
We definitely recommend that you invest the time and energy in developing a holistic digital marketing plan consisting of, at the very least, buyer persona development, keyword research, a content schedule and a search strategy and a strong emphasis on creating valuable content that you should then share on relevant social media marketing channels.
Make sure you have measurable goals and metrics from the start so you know which way you’re heading and can monitor your progress.
Another area to take into account is that your plan must be dynamic enough to be amended and added to. It helps if you are flexible enough to makes tweaks as you go along.
Check out the following blogs to learn more about lead generation strategies:
- B2B lead generation guide: how to get more leads
- 6 Powerful Lead Generation Strategies for B2B Companies
- Top 5 Tips for using PPC for B2B Lead Generation Strategies
Are you working with an experienced team?
There is a growing number of inbound marketing agencies popping up around the UK, and it can be hard to distinguish between those that have the experience and proven inbound lead generation techniques, including a landing page, an effective lead generation strategy, and a sales funnel, from those who don't.
Rather than looking for the agency with the most staff, you should look for the one that has actually planned, implemented and optimised the highest number of successful inbound marketing programmes.
After making sure that the agency has the relevant experience, you need to dig deeper and look at the agency’s process, staff, background, methodologies and sector experience.
A clear indicator is, do they practice what they preach? Do they have success generating leads? Do they use a marketing automation platform and is their website reflective of inbound methodologies? Or are they, as so many are, purely a digital agency wrapped in inbound clothing?
How much are you investing in your inbound programme?
The fact is that the more money you invest in your inbound marketing strategy, the faster your results will be.
If you are under-investing, you’ll soon find that there’s a discrepancy between how many leads you want and how many leads you’re actually getting.
Investing £4-5,000 a month will get you much quicker results than investing just £1,000 a month and hoping that the budget will cover all the marketing areas you require.
The amount you need to invest depends on your performance expectations. This is entirely up to you. Look at the bigger picture. What is a consistent, highly-qualified and revenue-generating stream of leads worth to you? A few thousand a year, £10,000, £50,000?
After a sustained period of inbound marketing you could expect up to 300 leads a month with a percentage of those converting into customers.
Your expectations
Inbound is a marathon, not a sprint.
We would love to deliver 300 leads to you tomorrow, but we can't. When it comes to inbound, patience is a necessary virtue. It's not like paid advertising, where you can just turn it on and receive instant leads. Whilst that does sound appealing, turn off Google's profit centre and your leads disappear. The differences between acquiring one marketing-qualified lead and one thousand are both your budget and the team managing the campaign.
But never fear, there are ways to generate leads without Google, and with a clear and consistent strategy, inbound marketing will provide a constant stream of permission-based, nurtured leads.
With time, you will reach a critical mass and your lead generation will take flight.
For clients that stick with inbound and let their programme blossom, it’s not uncommon to get ten times the number of website visitors and five times the amount of lead generation. While we can’t state with any certainty how many leads you will get, we can say that you can expect a significant increase in website traffic and leads.
Keep your strategy consistent
Business is dynamic and you need to be able to react quickly to changes.
Having said that, you need to ensure that your marketing plan is consistent. If you’re adjusting your strategy on a regular basis, it will delay your ability to generate qualified leads. Think about it, changing logos, positioning, brand voice and style will affect any type of marketing’s ability to generate leads and drive results. Constantly changing your marketing strategy will undoubtedly set you back.
Work with us
Great partnerships work when both parties bring something to the table.
Our client’s role is to help us understand their business. It’s as individual as they are and needs an inbound strategy to reflect that. Our role is to generate leads from inbound marketing.
Help us understand your business, but give us leeway when it comes to making it work. It may not be the way you’ve always done it, but that’s the whole point. We’re all on the same team, and we all want to generate leads for your business. Keep that in mind as your inbound strategy springs into action
Looking for an inbound marketing agency worth their weight in gold? Contact us today for a free inbound marketing assessment.
