This week three members of our team are preparing for travel to Inbound 2014 in Boston, the fastest growing conference for Inbound Marketers. It’s way cool. We’ll “sharpen our saws” in hundreds of sessions with thousands of marketers of like mind.
At lots of companies, the marketing crafts, old school or inbound, are barely connected to business strategy, and often tactical. So where do all the elements of digital e-marketing or inbound marketing fit?
Are they strategic? Or a “bag o' tactics?”
I’ll cut to the chase: At many SMB's online marketing efforts ARE disconnected tactics. But today, it’s essential that marketing becomes strategic to provide sales.
It’s like sales.
Is sales strategic or tactical? It’s both. And essential.
Experience has taught me that in every marketing engagement there is a high level of variability. Marketing managers can’t be expert at every craft. And frankly, in smaller companies they are often overworked tacticians and not really part of the top level strategic team. In the company hierarchy they are sales support: valuable as hell, but probably not setting larger effective strategies. Sound familiar?
When the senior business management team senses they need to bake up some “more and better” modern marketing, everyone (sort of) knows what the ingredients are. But they do not have a good recipe.
That’s different than most traditional marketing engagements where there is a more finite tactical job to do.
But here’s my point about Inbound Marketing and marketing strategy.
One: It’s essential… because
Two: It requires you have, and improve, an integrated marketing and sales strategy.
If you hire an Inbound Marketing firm, it must be part of your business and sales strategy. And hell, it might BE your marketing strategy.
Why?
And…it will put a vendor-partner-collaborator on your team who asks really good questions of your marketing and sales people. It will help measure everyone’s results and make everyone better at selling your product or service.
Have a strategy. If we do A... and B..., then C will happen. Create key performance indicators. Measure them.
Don’t miss out on valuable online leads by doing sales and marketing without an inbound marketing strategy.
If you want to learn more, download our FREE The Complete Guide To Unifying Your Sales & Marketing Efforts.
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