The “Big Business” approach is the idea that all marketing issues can be solved by money. Well to be completely frank, spending a lot of money can solve a lot of problems but that is often not an option for medium and small businesses. On the other hand a small business or organization may not need 15 million web visitors next year to get enough business to prosper. As one associate told me recently, he needs ONE more client this year to be profitable. It is more important to get the right traffic then a lot of irrelevant traffic. Inbound marketing gives medium and small businesses an excellent way to drive the right kind of traffic, get leads and convert those leads to customers at a minimum cost. As Guy Kawasaki, former Chief Evangelist for Apple and co-founder of ALLTOP.COM says in the above illustration, “If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains then money, you should focus on inbound marketing.”
Since you are probably not Costco my advice would be to not spend money and concentrate on inbound marketing. You don’t need to do everything at once, just pick one or two things to start from and build from there. Here are a few suggestions: (The following statistics come from research by HubSpot and presented in our eBook: Lead Generation Lessons From 4,000 Businesses.)
Inbound marketing does take time and it does take commitment but it also levels the playing field for small and medium sized businesses. You don’t need an angel investor or an influx of cash, just some time to invest in your blog and online content. If you have wondered about how well your website is set up for inbound marketing then contact us for a free customized, website evaluation.
Photo: Ranger Rick