Inbound lead generation is something that can only be accomplished if you have a consistent content strategy. You cannot have a successful inbound lead gen program without a content engine. Everything always comes back to content. You cannot get inbound leads without the creation of content. You cannot have a good marketing automation system setup without content. Whatever way you look at it- content is the engine. If your company wants to do inbound lead gen they have to be creating content. You cannot have one without the other.
One of the first things that your organization will have to agree on is that you are going to put an internal initiative in place for content generation. Content generation takes time, thought, effort and consistency. Across the organization you must have buy in that your company wants to do inbound lead gen. Everyone needs to understand why inbound lead gen is important and how it is going to help your company to reach your growth goals. Inbound lead generation can only happen if everyone knows why it is important to your company.
So now you have to prove to people across the organization that content generation will help them in their roles as well. The end goal of content generation across the organization is that it will help your company to grow. If your employees are all working towards a certain goal – as a company this should already be something your organization understands. One quick way to gauge if your employees understand what your company is working towards is to ask them. Walk up to someone and quickly see if they understand the company goals. Assess what people are saying and then figure out if you should have a meeting to recap why everyone is doing what they are doing. Everyone has a role in the company with their own goals but everyone needs to understand the company goals. Once company goals are established and everyone is clear as to what type of growth you are trying to reach it will make it easier to explain how inbound marketing and inbound sales will help your organization to get there. You can explain why each person has a role in that and if everyone agrees on those goals content generation will need to become part of their duties as contributor to the company’s growth.
There are many ways that you can go about explaining to your teams why they need to start to generate content for your company.
- Everyone at your company is a thought leader. Everyone has different things that they are good at. If you can get certain people across different roles to write about what they learn and what they do day to day you will start to expose keyword sets that your marketing team probably is working on getting found for.
- People in different roles have things that they notice and see in the market that will help your company to reach those people. For example- a sales person regularly sees trends in the market from talking to prospects. It would therefore be smart to create content around those things they are seeing so that your marketing efforts are timely and relevant to the people you are targeting.
- A support rep sees problems and issues coming in from your customers daily. I would bet that some of those things are consistent and happen a lot. Imagine if you had a quick way of creating content around that topic so the sales reps can quickly give that customer the info they need. It will also benefit people in other roles when they see the same things happening.
- Your employees should care about their personal branding. Personal branding will help your employees do better at their job. Prospects and customers want to know that your company is legit and wants to know that the people they are working with are smart. If your employees have blog posts and content that they can point to this will create more respect for your organization. Building up content across many different topics will enable your organization to be seen as the industry thought leader and will also help your employees to improve their own credibility.
Here are a few stats that will help you prove why inbound marketing and inbound lead gen is a good idea for your organization. These stats should help you to prove your points.
- 75% of all clicks go to organic results.
- 89% of US internet users search online before they make a purchase.
- Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links than those that don’t. Creating great content
is the key to getting inbound links. - 60% of all organic clicks go to the top three organic search results.
- 75% of users never go further than the first page of search results.
- 46% of daily searches are for research on products or services. The more pages you have, the
better chance you have of ranking high. - Leads generated via inbound marketing tactics like blogging & social media cost 62% less than
those generated by outbound marketing tactics like direct mail and print ads. - 78% of sales that start with a web inquiry get won by the company that responds first.
- 75% of leads buy within 18-24 months. (Source: MarketingSherpa)
Once you prove your points as to why inbound marketing and content creation will help your organization to grow. You can start to figure out what type of content will help your company to get found for what you do. There are ways to figure out how much traffic, leads, customers you might be able to get through inbound marketing and content generation. The next step is to analyze your sales organization to see where inbound marketing can help them improve their results.
