Generating leads has grown considerably more targeted over the last 50 years. The days of driving around and making house calls has seen it’s better days. Direct mail, TV ads and newspaper ads all have seen their better days. News media is now turning to technology to save them from becoming a dinosaur. The print industry is now offering optimization as a draw to get your ad dollars. Is it working? That is a good question.

One question I can answer is the question of inbound verses outbound marketing. Do you need them both? The answer is yes. A customer of ours spent $25,000 on a website. They called us in to help market the practice. One thing they could not figure out was why they were not getting traffic to their new over priced site. The answer. They took their entire marketing budget to finance this beautifully designed site. Then they sat back and like the “Field of Dreams” waited for the business to come. Well that just did not happen. Nor will it happen for your business. Your website is only one component of your marketing strategy. Outbound and inbound marketing is a must.

Cut Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing is all the stuff I spoke about earlier. This includes TV ads, direct mail, newspaper, directories, etc.  Before you cut anything get out the ruler and measure each one and define the ROI (Return on Investment). It is pretty simple. Example: If you spent $1000 on a directory listing and you got two customers. These two customers brought in $100 each. The ROI is not good for that investment. Measure, measure, measure. Define in the beginning how you are going to measure your efforts.

Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is changing every day. There is something new and innovative that is launched every day to supposedly make life easier. Sometimes it accomplishes that goal and then sometimes it is just overwhelming. I am here to help clear some of the muddy water. Inbound marketing includes blogging, email marketing, social media, search engines and a whole arsenal of other high tech marketing tools. One of the major benefits of inbound marketing is that it usually comes with a tape measure built in. Simply said, you can measure your results with very little effort. If you are questioning outbound verses inbound marketing then I think the graph below will help clear the water.