Marketing

How Long Does it Take to See Inbound Marketing Results

By | May 25, 2016

If there is one rule that makes marketing successful, it’s hard work and perseverance. This is true for conventional and traditional marketing just as much as it is for inbound marketing.

In order for inbound marketing to succeed, it requires persistence, and most importantly: time.

Inbound methodology is different than traditional marketing and it’s an investment. It’s not focused on just finding you any customers, but attracting the specific and exact type of leads you desire. It probably won’t bring you instantaneous leads, but by building an inbound marketing strategy on a foundation of good inbound, SEO, and online practices, you will be receive quality leads over time.

How long will it actually take?

Everyone would love to see new leads as soon as possible. Unfortunately the ideal situation isn’t always the reality. There is no exact time frame that success is guaranteed from an inbound strategy, and each business will vary depending upon different factors:

  • Your existing sales cycle
  • Your existing website. Was the last update you’ve done was about 7 years ago or is your site part of your current marketing strategy.
  • How invested you are in inbound (are you publishing one blog of SEO-friendly content a week or three?)
  • How well-aligned your content offers or deliverables are with buyer pain points

So what can you expect in the early stages of inbound?

Inbound marketing is growth over time. The key in starting inbound is creating a foundation for organic search growth that will bring you leads over time.

This means that the leads you collect with inbound will exist because they found you online;because a blog article, content offer or deliverable you provide directly addresses the problems they are facing.

The inbound methodology is all about giving prospects what they want when they go online – information. It converts strangers into customers in four basic steps: attract, convert, close, delight.

In the first six months of inbound marketing, you will build the foundation for larger-scale inbound growth.  You’ll see the first real traction (lead generation and site visitor increases) in months 3 and 4. The goal is by the six month mark, to be able to compare leads and visits to your starting figures, and determine a rate that will generally show you what you can expect continuing with inbound marketing.

Case study: our own story

The reason we are so confident in inbound marketing is because we’ve seen it work for our own business. Last fall, we started our own inbound marketing efforts and began publishing fresh content on a much more regular basis. The first couple of months proved to be slow as we focused on growing our foundation of creating SEO optimized blog content.

But with effort and good inbound practices, we have grown our monthly visitors to our blog by over four times !

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What’s key is that we’ve seen a more consistent growth in new leads and prospects.

We have been helping organizations for years create electronic communication stragetgy, and we are excited about putting all that knowledge to work to offer an even more comprehensive solution to creating integrated marketing programs for our clients.

If you’d like to learn some of the inbound techniques in acquiring new leads, then download our free ebook for 30 tips, tricks, and ideas for generating new leads.

Need help establishing marketing goals for next quarter? Download our free template to help you plan some smart marketing goals for your business!

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Andrew Coffey
Andrew Coffey