Companies are more likely to see a higher return on investment through inbound marketing than through outbound.
According to Inbound Cycle’s 2017 Inbound Marketing Results Study, companies that implement an Inbound Marketing strategy are achieving:
- Multiply by 7 the number of MQLs (marketing qualified leads) generated in a year and by 9 after 2 years.
- Generate up to 3.8 times more registrations in one year and 14.7 in 2 years.
- Quadruple the number of visits in 1 year and multiply them by 24.3 in 2 years.
One of the barriers to implementing is that this does not happen overnight. It is a strategy with medium and long-term results.
Inbound Marketing stands out from the traditional approach that many entrepreneurs were taught in college.
It has much less to do with press releases, trade shows, and announcements, and much more to do with new media such as social media, blogging and content creation, email marketing, automation, and web design, among other things.
Inbound Marketing is a long-term commitment that takes time and resources to really understand and master, and many times, despite its good results, this makes many companies slow to adopt Inbound Marketing as a growth strategy for their business.
In this post we wanted to ask 13 experts what they think are the main barriers or problems of Inbound Marketing for its implementation in companies and what is their point of view on how to overcome these barriers:
| Sonia Duro Limia | Fátima Martínez |
| Javier Cordero | Miguel Florido |
| Eva Sanagustín | Nestor Marquínez |
| Cláudio Russo Inácio | Milca Peguero |
| Nano Lamberti | Marco Novo |
| Jordi Planas | Susana Pavón |
| Montse Peñarroya | Conclusion |
Sonia Duro Limia
Digital Marketing and Social Selling Consultant | Trainer
“Magic formulas do not exist. And even less so in sales. If someone had the perfect combination for immediate results, they would be a millionaire.
That is the goal of all companies and businesses: to sell.
But we must be clear that sales models evolve and are efficient to the extent that they adapt to their target customer or Buyer Persona.
Years ago I remember that sellers came to the door of the house. And my mother bought them. Today we do not even open the portal to them. The world changes and so does the way we sell.
Inbound Marketing is the answer to consumers’ fatigue from receiving invasive and aggressive advertising in the media.
Or wouldn’t we like customers to knock on our door? That’s what Inbound Marketing achieves.
In my 20 years of offline sales I have had clients who closed in 1 month and others in 1 year. And the same thing happens in the online world. You may close a sale with the reading of 1 post or a potential customer may need to follow you for 6 months before saying “I do”.
The great advantage we have with Inbound Marketing is that it is applied in a digital medium and, there, we can complement it with push sales strategies: Social Ads, among others.
This form of proactive approach to your target customer allows you to speed up the sales cycle. But, it has a big difference with conventional media: you control expenses and you know, at all times, if your advertising is being effective or not.
Therefore, if the professionals who are dedicated to Digital Marketing are didactic and clear when it comes to explaining the methodology that users demand, we will achieve:
- Reduce the barriers that organizations have in the face of their digitalization.
- We will give them the keys to trust they need to earn their trust.
What are your doubts about an Inbound Marketing model?”
Javier Cordero
Attraction Marketing Consultant for Digital Entrepreneurs
“We move in a world where there is more competition every day and people are more immune to being sold to, so implementing an Inbound Marketing or attraction marketing strategy in our companies is essential.
Make your potential customers come to you naturally instead of you going out to find them.
How do we do it? Adding value and generating attraction. Sales come later.
The reason why companies do not contemplate this type of strategy is that they think only about selling instead of attracting and selling. It is very difficult for them to understand that people not only buy for the product or service itself but also for the company behind it and for our emotional ties to it.
To this end, attraction marketing based on the contribution of strategic value allows us to obtain visibility, generate authority and empathy in the face of the competition. With which we will obtain a constant flow of potential customers exponentially.
High-value, loyal customers who will bring us other customers.
You have to understand that it is a long-term strategy. Hence its magic. This is what few companies do because they have short-term views. It is a sowing that combined with more short-term strategies will lead us to success. It is thinking about tomorrow without neglecting today.”
Eva Sanagustín
Freelance web writer specializing in content marketing
“Any marketing strategy today needs content. So it is more than likely that you are already generating a certain volume of content, although you may not be taking advantage of it well.
The key is not quantity, but quality and that’s where inbound marketing can help you.
To get the most out of every piece of content you make, think in terms of leverage. It doesn’t have to be all the content you produce to be new: you can use pieces that you have already published as a base and expand or reformat them. A couple of very simple options: group several posts into an ebook and turn a webinar into an infographic.
By recycling content you will get more out of the time you dedicate to it. And, with inbound marketing, you will make them more profitable since it will be easier for you to achieve the goal you have set for yourself. Continuing with the previous example, you will get visibility with the infographic, traffic to your blog and leads thanks to the ebook.
You just have to plan and have a global vision of the strategy so that your content is not a burden, but a profitable investment in the long term.”
Cláudio Russo Inácio
Blogger, Professor and Consultant of Personal Strategy, Blogging
and Social Networks
“For me, it is clear that betting on an Inbound Marketing strategy will bring many benefits to companies, such as:
- It allows us to know the consumer better;
- It is not a type of intrusive marketing (you do not saturate the potential customer);
- Generate a greater number of quality leads;
- You get greater loyalty and as a consequence more sales;
- Improve conversion rate in campaigns;
- It allows you to learn more about the purchase process, etc.
But then, why do companies have such a hard time adopting this type of strategy?
I think some of the reasons are:
- First, it is necessary to understand the philosophy behind Inbound Marketing, and for this it is necessary to change your mentality (which not everyone is willing to do);
- Then it is a long-term strategy, and as in everything in life, people and companies want everything for now. And since they don’t have that time or patience, they see it as an unfeasible strategy.
- Another problem is the lack of resources. To create this type of strategy, they need tools and professionals who master them and that often leads companies to decline this strategy.
- And to make a long story short, lack of vision, many continue with the same marketing strategies, the known ones (social media, PPC, Adwords, etc.), and close their eyes to new strategies either out of fear, lack of time or whatever.
To overcome these obstacles, I recommend that those who propose this type of strategy to companies first make them see the benefits it can bring them and then, if possible, show them success stories of companies in their sector (if possible) so that they see that Inbound Marketing can help them a lot to improve their results.”
Nano Lamberti
Digital Marketing Consultant
“In Spain, unfortunately, the lack of knowledge of the methodology and the desire to achieve immediate results become a very negative cocktail for many brands when it comes to making decisions about the Digital Marketing strategy.
Nowadays, Inbound Marketing has evolved, and paid advertising is a faithful ally to achieve results quickly while building the solid foundations of our brand.
For this reason, it is always important for the client to know how to differentiate that an Inbound strategy is durable over time and in the medium and long term it will end up significantly reducing the advertising costs of other actions.
Putting yourself in the shoes of the entrepreneur and talking to him with clear examples and possible results for his business and not talking about services is the basis for a proposal to come to fruition.”
Jordi Planas
CEO Inbound Manager Pro
“Inbound Marketing is a strategy that is based on attracting customers with useful, relevant content and adding value at each of the stages of the buyer’s journey.
The first step of the methodology is to have a clear and orderly head in a global vision of the strategy and an adequate knowledge of the details. Once again, as in most business activities, we are faced with a need to coordinate strategy and objectives with tactics.
To carry out the endless management areas that an Inbound Marketing strategy requires, many specific activities and tasks will be needed.
The main challenges to be overcome are:
- Challenge No. 1: The transformation of the consumer: the change in the seller-buyer relationship.
- Challenge Nº2: The technological difficulty for the digital transformation of marketing and sales activity.
- Challenge Nº3: The balance between human relationships and new technologies.
- Challenge Nº4: The complexity and cost of implementing digital sales and marketing management tools.
How to overcome them:
Overcoming the first challenge involves accepting and assuming the new relationship that the client is looking for, where the power of the decision is in their hands. Attracting them and building relationships through quality content, suitable for each phase of their journey as a buyer is the key. We must accept that building a relationship is not immediate, and that generating trust, showing ourselves as experts in the field, is essential.
Our content shows the value of what we do and the impact we can have on the customer, by meeting their need with our value proposition. Quality is therefore fundamental.
In addition, we must be able to be in the right place at the right time.
Therefore, short-term strategies will not fit with an inbound marketing strategy, since building a relationship is not a one-day issue.
Inbound marketing is going to coexist, in fact, it must coexist with other digital marketing strategies, to configure a real 360° digital activity.
The second and fourth challenges, the technological difficulty, complexity and cost of implementation must be overcome with the appropriate tools and the necessary training for each particular case. There are many application alternatives for the different tasks to be performed. A good strategy is to look for a platform that integrates the maximum number of functionalities.
The third challenge listed above is probably the cornerstone of the success of an Inbound Marketing strategy that leads us to increase sales. Synchronize the appropriate sales activities for each phase of the buyer’s journey, in order to adapt the content and actions to be carried out according to the interest that our lead shows us at all times. This balance between the interest shown and the content and actions to be carried out will be facilitated by the new technologies available.
In short, Inbound Marketing is a winning strategy as long as it is executed with the right expectations, the right methodology, and the right tools for it. And therein lies its difficulty.
The virtuous circle of management, setting objectives, planning, acting, measuring and evaluating is also necessary to apply in your Inbound Marketing activity.”
Montse Peñarroya
Director 3isic
“Nowadays no one considers whether a company should have a website or not, the question is rather focused on whether or not it should have e-commerce, all companies have a website. The problem is that they don’t know how to drive traffic to that site, nor do they know how to turn it into a real business tool.
Inbound Marketing is one of the best tactics to attract qualified visits to a website, but paradoxically the lack of knowledge in Digital Marketing causes companies to focus on attracting visits with advertising, if the budget allows it, or through the management of their presence on social networks, if the budget is only enough for one person performing the functions of community manager.
When advertising is well focused on the company’s market segments, shows a good value proposition and the ad landing page is correct, it becomes a good tool and is able to get customers and increase turnover. Unfortunately, this is not the most common and the budget is wasted without getting results.
On the other hand, when companies do not have a budget for advertising, what they usually do is hire a person to dynamize the company’s presence on social networks. This person usually believes that their main task is the creation of content to fulfill a daily publication on the chosen networks without understanding what the true mission of their work is. This is when Inbound Marketing makes sense and becomes the main tactic that with a good action plan will lead us to success.
Inbound Marketing is a tactic that is applied in digital marketing to get a certain target audience to feel attracted to our communications and voluntarily go to our website or our social networks to be able to read and share them. To do this, we will use the creation of specific content for that audience as the main tool of attraction and techniques such as SEO and the publication of that content on social networks to attract the target audience.
The main obstacle of Inbound Marketing is that it requires a slightly more elaborate strategy than advertising, and that it takes a little longer to be effective. On the other hand, it is much less aggressive than other techniques and works better than advertising in market segments that are not attracted by direct commercial communications. The objective of Inbound Marketing is that thanks to our content, the customer thinks “wow… I like this company, I want to know more about them and about the products they market.” Not direct sales.
To obtain results quickly, we have several strategies. The main one is market penetration, that is, with content very similar to what we already have on the website we must be able to attract more people similar to our current customers. To carry out this strategy it is necessary to use tools such as Google Analytics that will directly indicate which phrases are bringing traffic to our website. From this information, we can create content that contains these phrases and that is related to the topic searched for by users and thanks to techniques such as SEO to ensure that, in a few days, these contents appear in the top positions of Google. From that moment on, the technique we will apply will be to improve conversion thanks to the usability and persuasion of our website, since the objective will be to obtain the data of the visit, if our website does not have e-commerce, or to convert the visitor into a customer if it does have a transactional website.
Another strategy that can work quickly to attract website visits is diversification. That is, we will create entirely new content to appeal to market segments that are not now captivated by current content. To do this, we must define a new segment and know what they are interested in in order to create that content. To find out what interests a market segment we can ask some of its members, we can use tools such as Google Trends, Google Suggest or Google Related to find out what they are looking for, or we can use topics that are trendy or in the news at a certain time. The point is to reach new segments with new content.
The content must be in various formats such as articles, infographics, graphics, questions and answers, videos, interviews, etc. and it must be chosen either if it will be published on the website or on social networks, although it must always be remembered that the ultimate goal is not simply to create content, but to create content that is attractive to people who are likely to become visitors to our website and a customer for our company.
Finally, we must remember that without customer orientation and without SEO knowledge or advanced social media knowledge, no matter how much we create good content, we will not make Inbound Marketing work.”
Fátima Martínez
Expert in Communication, Marketing and Social Media
“I think that the problem cannot be generalized to all companies, so I prefer to separate by type of company:
1.- Companies that do not know it: Small companies that do not know the techniques. Many companies, mainly SMEs, are still quite lost in communication issues and think that by being present on a couple of social networks and a website they have everything solved. I call them “I cook it and I eat it”. They just talk about their company and products and with that they think they have everything done. The vast majority of these companies still consider that the Internet is free and are not willing to invest in having tools and I am not saying a team, but an agency that advises them or a qualified professional to carry out the strategies (many of them lack a strategy even)
2.- Companies that have tried and have had bad experiences: On the other hand, some companies have also had bad experiences with professionals who have offered their services, without any training and without knowing the subject in depth, and the bad results obtained have made them distrustful. Therefore, it is difficult to convince them again.
Companies that have used it but want results immediately. Many companies that have used Inbound Marketing are in a hurry and want to get results from today to tomorrow, without taking into account the times. They hire a professional, thinking that he has a magic wand and will get conversions immediately, of course without investing a single euro.
In my opinion, the Inbound Marketing strategy should be part of a whole, it should not be used in isolation because it would be incomplete. A good strategy should include Inbound actions, but also paid advertising, in the same way that it should have on and off actions. The best way to convince a client is by obtaining results, but above all by being honest, making clear from the beginning the deadlines for achieving objectives and understanding that miracles in Marketing happen rarely.
Isolated Inbound can be slow, but associated with other Marketing techniques it achieves results sooner than we think, in terms of price it is not expensive, on the contrary, you have to know, value and make the company see all the work behind it in sophisticated tools, creativity and content development, much more intense than planning an advertising campaign. In addition, although the tools at first glance seem expensive, the information and the results obtained compensate.
To overcome these obstacles, the first thing to do is to professionalize the sector more.
Nowadays everyone knows about Marketing, they talk about its techniques (among others Inbound) as if they mastered it as a specialist (some even call themselves experts). Perhaps in recent years many professionals from other areas have seen the gold mine in marketing and communication, thanks to the boom of social networks, and have found a job opportunity in this field, offering their services for these issues, without previous training, without exhaustive knowledge of tools, without experience, it is what I call “professionals with a bar marketing culture”. They tell what they hear, what a friend has told them, apply what they hear in a conference or what they read in different blogs. They limit themselves to copying strategies that someone has published (they are rarely trained to develop them personally) and hinder the work of true professionals. In addition, prices fall to unsuspected limits, which destabilizes the sector.
SMEs receive such antagonistic budgets for what in theory is supposed to be the same work, that when an agency or professional consultant arrives and the client compares the price with the previous ones, they believe that it is a scam, which is why Inbound seems expensive to them.
Secondly, and apart from the above, you have to get more involved with the brand.
If we think and trust in our strategy, part of the budget should go to fixed, to pay professionals and tools, and another to variable depending on the results obtained. Serious brands would understand it much better and optimal turnover would be assured.
Miguel Florido
Digital Marketing and Social Media Consultant
“I mainly consider that there are 3 problems in a company’s decision-making when it comes to betting on an inbound marketing strategy:
1.- Cost and difficulty of implementation. It is true that a priori and at a glance it can be uphill for us to integrate this inbound marketing strategy into your business, but the process is simplified when you integrate those services or products that are a priority for you. I’m talking to you from experience, as I’m working to integrate the inbound marketing strategy into some of the courses offered by my School of Marketing and Web.
2.- Cost of the content strategy. You have to quantify the cost of designing and executing a correct content strategy that is effective and gets the leads or conversions you are looking for.
3.- Cost of advertising on social networks or other payment channels. I always invest in paid channels with the aim of obtaining highly qualified leads that we can continue working on and advancing through the funnel until they become customers.
An Inbound marketing strategy can simply multiply your results, it’s that simple, it’s not a matter of a large investment and logically we need time when working on the organic positioning of articles, but in the medium and long term it is a very effective strategy.
Perhaps the serious problem is to think that a paid strategy is going to give you immediate results, and it does not always happen, so betting on more effective strategies in the medium or long term should be the way to go, at least I always bet on that idea.
Logically, Inbound requires time just like any good digital marketing strategy but if we integrate it with advertising strategies we can shorten the time to obtain results, both strategies should be integrated and work as a single strategy.
In principle it does not have to be expensive, but here I open a parenthesis, since providing for very good quality content will logically have a higher cost than betting on generalist content, but it is always a cost that any company should be able to assume.
You don’t need to generate a lot of resources, here I bring the Pareto Principle applied to content, where 4 contents can make a company’s inbound marketing strategy work, so it is not a question of quantity but a few content of high quality, and where you work very well to obtain traffic in the different channels.
I have already been introducing it before, you have to carry out an analysis phase to find which are the 4 contents that are going to make our project profitable from an inbound prism, the next step is to position them, as well as position the brand well to achieve the highest result in conversion.
I give you several examples, in my blog I have 2 contents that generate from 400 to 700 euros per month in affiliation, that is, 2 blog articles generate more than 1,000 euros per month.
Other examples are the content that helps me get students for my Marketing School or to sell tickets for my Digital Marketing Congress, all of which are clear examples that applying inbound marketing strategies can multiply the results x10.
What are you waiting for to introduce inbound marketing strategies in your company?
Nestor Marquínez
Email Marketing Specialist
“Inbound marketing…
Sounds good, right?
But do companies (and entrepreneurs) really understand what it consists of?
In my (not) modest opinion, I believe that the lack of knowledge about this marketing methodology is a barrier that prevents many more businesses from exploiting its potential.
Yes…
It is true that, in order to get the most out of this methodology, we need a series of specific tools. And that may be scary at first.
In any case, what work does not require your specific tools?
And yes…
It is also true that the inbound marketing methodology is not focused on achieving immediate results, it does not focus on the here and now.
But your business doesn’t live off the here and now, either.
Your business lives on attracting (not to be confused with pursuing) your ideal customer, long-lasting relationships and long-term strategy.
And that’s precisely what Inbound Marketing is looking for.”
Milca Peguero
Consultant, speaker, strategist and facilitator of Digital Marketing and Social Media Management | Inbound Marketing Specialist
“From my experience and in the market in which I operate, the implementation of an Inbound Marketing strategy can present various problems and/or challenges.
The first and main barrier, which also significantly influences the triggering of other problems, is in the misconception of what Inbound Marketing really is, which leads many companies to request the implementation of this solution without being fully aware of what it really implies, especially considering that Inbound Marketing is a methodology that transforms the sales process. customer interaction, among other aspects of the business; which also implies a transformation that begins in the mind of senior management and extends to the entire company. This leads me daily to meet companies that instead of transforming themselves to adapt to the methodology, want to adapt the methodology to their worldview.
I have found a second barrier when choosing the necessary tools to implement an inbound strategy. This is based on the fact that our market is mainly composed of micro, small and medium entrepreneurs, which makes it difficult to include great ALL-IN-ONE tools in their small marketing budgets. Not to mention the main factor: skepticism driven by the first barrier, which leads to the refusal to invest in it. This forces us to do unsustainable work using a long list of different tools to be able to exhaust all the steps of our strategy, or in the worst case it leads us to eliminate actions from it.
Thirdly, the same misconception of Inbound Marketing, added to a market floating in the bubble of Social Media Marketing, leads us to the premise that the only thing a company needs are profiles on Instagram or Facebook + a significant investment in paid advertising, detracting from the relevance of practically the rest of the Inbound process. Don’t get me wrong, I understand how valuable and effective paid advertising can be, as it is a necessary tactic that plays a valuable role as an integral part of a strategy, however, I see it as just that, as a part of the vehicle, not as the vehicle itself.
To these main barriers we can also add the constant thirst for immediate results and the refusal to invest in something different from what they already know.
Now, how do we deal with this?
I understand that the main way to do this is through education. No one can love (or at least accept) something they don’t know, and it’s our duty to help entrepreneurs first and foremost know and understand what Inbound is and isn’t, but more importantly, why it’s beneficial to their businesses. And I don’t just mean education with online content. I am also referring to conversations and/or meetings with those clients and potential clients. Let’s talk to them about today’s consumer behavior habits, let’s talk about statistical data, and why this methodology provides an excellent platform to respond to such behavior. Let’s help them understand that the end result of a well-implemented Inbound strategy is loyal and evangelistic customers, and from there let’s talk about how this will help them increase profitability. This is so that when they decide to embark on the trip, they are aware of the implications. I believe that the challenge is to help them throw away the old and overdue chip, to start using a new and updated one.
Yes, Inbound Marketing is a methodology that involves time, investment, dedication and a lot of effort, however, compared to traditional marketing, it is enormously cheaper, more profitable, produces real results, and more than anything, measurable.”
Marco Novo
Marketing lover, ever longing learner, culture passionate, story listener
“Would you invite someone over for dinner, if you don’t know them and don’t trust them? Besides, would it generate confidence in you, if it only remembers you to ask you for favors, and when you need it, it is never there?
This is the big difference between Inbound and Outbound marketing, one asks you to help him, the other helps you at the right time.
However, many companies are still slow to understand this! What, my business is to sell, not to give things. I am not going to waste time creating free content, if in the end they are going to buy from my competition, besides, everyone already knows what my products or services are for.
Very far from reality. How many times do we search on Google and/or Youtube, just to talk about the most common search tools, or a friend recommends or shares content on social media with something very useful, and they solve that doubt or problem that was worrying us so much?
And what is all this for? To reach your customers earlier, so that people know what we do, how we do it, what we are good for, and above all, to generate trust because at a given time, our content helped them solve a little problem they had on the computer screen, or to buy the most suitable product in the online store.
Yes, it’s true, Inbound strategies can and should also be applied in online stores. You never searched for “buy red leather shoes.” If the page is made to “help” it will surely bring more traffic and sell more!
Look, if you go for Inbound, at all times you will know if the lead or the customer is interested and how much they are, and you will not go around blindly, waiting for one or the other to buy from you, and the others who are annoyed with your calls, your advertisements, your emails, without even being interested in what you have to sell.
Inbound marketing is very effective, because it helps, generates trust, creates relationship, and your customers will feel indebted to you, because before you helped them with a difficulty, and think, with all this they will value your things more, that is, you can sell more expensive, you can sell more times, because they will remember you more and recommend you.
Do you still find it expensive and not so effective? Think about it!”
Susana Pavón
Marketing Consultant and Community Manager
“One of the big problems that this methodology generates at the beginning is not trusting it due to cost issues and the time needed to implement it.
That’s why it’s important to soak up the Inbound methodology and incorporate it into your marketing strategy as a philosophy to incorporate it into your projects immediately.
If it is an agency, all departments must work in alignment and with the same purpose: to generate leads and then attract them to the marketing funnel.
What is the value of a lead if we don’t know how to treat it properly?
How to achieve these leads that are a fundamental part of the Inbound methodology? Through software that contains important functionalities such as SEO management, creation of effective Landing Pages, forms and Call To Actions that capture leads and segment and qualify leads to offer valuable content through Inbound Marketing.
Without a doubt, there are various Inbound Marketing software that allow us to manage and automate. Depending on the resources and the number of clients we handle, we will choose one or the other.
It is likely that at this point the Inbound Marketing methodology may seem to us to be expensive since various techniques must be applied to reach the user.
However, put into practice, Inbound Marketing has a great advantage over any other strategy: by segmenting and educating our users, turning them into customers, we educate them by giving them what at all times brings them value given the moment of maturation of the purchase in which they are and therefore our chances of closing the sale is greater because we know who is really interested and who still needs us to give them a “push”.
The Inbound Marketing methodology is viable for any sector and its success lies in enabling sustainable growth thanks to the joint application of techniques such as content marketing, SEO and automation.”
Conclusion
They say that there is no better defense than a good offense. The attack in Inbound Marketing is simmering, but when it begins to bear fruit it can do so exponentially.
At that time, when the growth of qualified leads is already sustainable, the dependence on paid acquisition channels becomes less and less.
Inbound Marketing, therefore, is an investment not only with a return in the medium term but also ensures success in the future.
What more reasons do you need to implement your Inbound Marketing strategy?
What are the barriers that hold you back?
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