How long does an Inbound strategy take to give results?

In 2004, Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, and David Meerman began to develop modern inbound marketing methodology, a method that has the premise that the customer is in charge, and that the moment they feel ready to buy, they will arrive. to our business with your need. However, your client will not come to you if they have never heard of your product or service, this is where Inbound Marketing becomes important. 

Establishing your company as an expert on the topics of interest to your target audience will create confidence in them and make them an option to solve their needs. This trust is not generated from one day to the next, we must build it and your customers will realize this precisely when answering the questions or concerns that they would be feeling and thinking before buying one of your products. 

Table of Contents 

• How inbound behaves in companies 
• Factors to consider for the success of your inbound strategy  
• Is it possible to speed up this process? 

It is very likely that you are already familiar with the Inbound Marketing methodology if not, here is a brief summary: HUBSPOT “Inbound is a method to attract and delight people to grow a business that provides value and builds trust." read a little more on our blog What is Inbound Marketing? 

When thinking about implementing inbound marketing in your company, some questions will arise, for example, does inbound marketing work? How long does it take to get up and running or what does inbound marketing success look like? Today we are here to answer those questions.  

The first question is really easy to answer, does inbound marketing work? The answer is yes, absolutely, and we have seen it in ourselves and in our clients, so we have no doubt. However, the remaining questions, for better or for worse, are a bit more difficult to answer. 

An Inbound Marketing process can vary for each company or industry. Although any of these will see results with the methodology, there is not really a definitive and one-size-fits-all schedule, however, and setting the correct SMART objectives, we will have the possibility of drawing a route to follow to see the expected results. These SMART goals will give your company a direction to strive in, so make sure everyone on your team is familiar with them. 

A good outcome comes from a good beginning, so let's quickly look at the outline of how an Inbound Marketing strategy should be built as a reminder. 

• Step 1: Define your Buyer Persona 
• Step 2: Learn about the Buyers Journey 
• Step 3: Define the sales process 
• Step 4: Create a content strategy 

• Step 5: Drive traffic to your website 
• Step 6: Convert traffic to logs 
• Step 7: Automate Marketing 
• Step 8: Define your Commercial Offer  

These steps or pillars as I like to call them, are quite universal, if you follow them you can develop your strategy properly. But these steps can also be very broad, there is no single type of Buyer Persona and not all people follow the same Buyer's Journey when it comes to buying, therefore you will need to make your strategy your own, which means You need to customize it for your industry and your brand goals and SMART goals listed above. 

It is also important to note that by being made up of several steps, it takes time and commitment to see success in each phase. Even if you're getting anxious and want to see more results faster, it's critical that you don't skimp on the strategy process. As Forbes says, “The information collected here is critical to all future entry efforts. If you don't spend adequate time interviewing and researching people, researching content, understanding people's pain points, and mapping their journey, you can seriously hamper the impact of all the inbound content you post. " 

But this blog is about knowing how long my Inbound Marketing strategy is going to take to give results, it is not true, so let's see the factors to consider: 

1. Efforts on my website before implementing the Inbound strategy  

A problem to be solved today is ensuring that a web page is adequate to what visitors request.  

Is it perhaps, a page that was developed a few years ago in the hope of entering the digital world, but there really is no continuous update or a section that keeps our prospects informed? Are there tools to capture customer information and thus create a solid database to lead these people to a purchase through Lead nurturing? If you answered no to any of these questions, then it is time to think about your website as your main digital asset to attract customers. It is alarming to see how many clients believe that having 100,000 followers on Facebook will ensure sales, I ask you now, what will happen to their 100 or 500 thousand followers if Facebook, Linkedin or Instagram close? Do you have how to contact these people? If the answer is no, you are in great trouble.  

This is where the use of a CRM becomes relevant. Therefore, before starting your Inbound Marketing process, it is necessary that you have the right tools to help you achieve success. This preparation stage can take 1 to 2 months, depending on the size and industry of your business and how prepared or equipped you are. After the preparation stage, your focus should be on creating great content in the form of blogs, content offerings, and campaigns. 

2. Content generation  

The implementation process is over, and we have built our Buyer Persona, it is time to start building our base of valuable content, which we will call the seeding period. A good strategy must have a diversity of content, but make no mistake, even if we feel that a piece of content is not having the expected result, let us remember that the goal is to develop experience and reliability in the eyes of the consumer. With that goal in mind, here are some of the best types of marketing that you can (and should) use to produce meaningful and actionable results:  

Blogging: Don't you have a blog for your company yet? This should be fixed immediately. Relevant and industry-specific blog posts are critical to your success  as you add timeless content to your website that will generate ROI and SEO authority over time.  

Emails: Through this direct communication tool you will be able to continue nurturing your prospects. Send them an email with relevant content. Already a customer? So, automate the process and send them regular updates that keep your brand a priority so when they're ready to do business again, they know who to turn to. Don't have a database for sending emails? Well, the following type of marketing can help you.  

Content offers: These pieces also known as "private content", can provide prospects free content, but in exchange for contact information, if bingo, your email, the most important data we will have from this contact to continue with your nutrition. Among the content offerings we can offer are e-books, white papers, case studies or other high value material. Thanks to this information, your sales team will have a potential client to follow up. Here are other options to offer content so you can continue building. 

All of this content we've talked about transforms into something that will deliver a lot more value over time, as content offerings will generate leads and email marketing will nurture them, the blog will drive a lot more traffic to your site. Each of them contributes something valuable to your Inbound Marketing strategy, but the visualization of these results will be reflected in the continuous construction. The more content you produce, you are likely to see more results, but be patient, even the best content takes time to gain traction, remember to grow your big garden and you will notice that all those seeds you planted will produce residual success for your company. 

3. Investment in marketing platforms

Paying for social media ads may be the secret to magnifying the relevance, visibility and accessibility of your brand. Sometimes it happens to us that when we start with a client they are very willing to build content, but they think that in addition to the results being visible immediately, there will be no need to pay for a subscription. This is a big mistake, skillful and well-informed promotion of your quality content through social media, taking your Buyer Persona into consideration in targeting, will help you maximize your results. 

You may have the best content on the web, but if no one knows about it, what good is that content? And some will tell me by now with SEO it should be possible to attract everyone, but to make sure your content is seen, it will still be time before it starts showing up in organic search results. 

If you are looking to accelerate results, you should familiarize yourself with paid media, however, be careful, as there are forms of paid advertising that veer towards outbound marketing methodologies, and these ads will drive potential customers away from your brand instead of inviting them in. 

Is it possible to speed up this process? 

Inbound marketing focuses on attracting people when they feel that you are solving their need, not the other way around, and that means you have to be patient and focus on producing the best content that allows you to become an industry "guru". , that company that people want to consult because they trust you.  

Inbound is not a rocket, it is not a strategy that gives immediate results just by pressing a button, it is also not recommended, since immediately launching your brand to success is not a sustainable strategy, because even the most powerful rocket engines eventually run out . Instead, you should view strategy as a ladder that evolves into an ever-up but steady elevator. 

If you are becoming more and more concerned about your marketing schedule, remember that you are building something and that building a foundation for all your future successes cannot happen overnight. 

On the other hand, I would not like to rule out the existence of strategies focused on achieving objectives as quickly as possible, however, they do not exclude the construction of content for Inbound in parallel, these are called Quick Wins, and they are strategies that are applied in the first months contemplating the generation of immediate prospects, techniques for identifying prospects by lead scoring and lead filtering, automation and optimization of sales processes, among some others. These Quick Wins tend to take between 2 and 5 months to generate results, however this content will be covered in another blog. 

Finally, remember that Inbound Marketing is a marathon, not a 50-meter race. You have to keep constantly moving to be successful, the more useful and valuable content you can create, your timeline could be shorter or longer, but one thing is for sure, no matter how long it takes, you cannot afford to do not adopt inbound marketing.