Why is Your Inbound Marketing Strategy Not Working?

We know that the best kind of marketing that we can use these days, is the one based on digital media which is why, carrying out and Inbound Marketing strategy is an option that every company should seriously consider as an opportunity to grow.

Now, many Inbound Marketing campaigns do not work as well as they should ... why's that? What can be done? Inbound Marketing works but the way that we carry out some campaigns might not be right sometimes. We must work constantly work on our campaigns until they become as successful as any other Inbound Marketing campaign that has proven to work.

Why is your strategy not working?

Carrying out an Inbound Marketing strategy can be a double-edged sword. New technologies allow us to automate many processes which is why some people think that once a campaign has started, they can just press the "automatic button" and let the campaigns "handle themselves". Nothing further from the truth. Or rather, yes you can do that, but letting things to be "handled by themselves" has never been a synonym of success.

Yes, a successful Inbound Marketing campaign requires of the airplane and the pilots, but it also requires constant attention to the flight, no "autopilot" here! In order to be successful, Inbound Marketing campaigns must be constantly worked-on, studied, evaluated, modified and redirected if necessary. They demand constant attention, patience and daily dedication, despite the automation of the processes that they indeed offer.

There are many reasons that can explain why your Inbound Marketing campaign is not working, we will mention some of the most common ones here:

1. You are not thinking of your buyer persona. You are promoting your company instead of seeking to solve the specific needs of your buyer persona. Who is your potential customer? What does he need? What problems does he face? Which are his interests and motivations? Who can indeed buy your product or service? Do you have this information? If not, you are only publishing lots of content that is not aiming a specific sector and thus, that does not respond to the specific questions that your customers may have. You are creating content of little interest for your potential customers. What you need to do is to focus more on them, offer specific solutions to the problem that they need to solve.
2. You are not measuring and studying the results of your strategy. So you've already started, you made a whole plan and you are carrying it out, yet you don't see the results that you expected to see. The thing is, you probably assumed that since work is actually being done, sooner or later it will all turn into great results. We're sorry to give you the bad news, but it's not quite like that. Not all work works, not every effort has its reward. You need to measure your results so that you can evaluate which activities - of all the tasks that you carry out - do work and which just don't. Studying the results of your strategies constantly and periodically, allows you to adjust them according to what actually works. We sometimes have great ideas that work well with one client but not so much with another one. Don't think that everything that you create will work, you must study what is really leading a campaign to success ("what works" is always changing, hence we need to constantly measure and readjust our work).
3. You are not considering the changes in your audience/technology. This aspect goes hand in hand with the previous one. Why should we constantly assess our results? Because what worked well yesterday, might not work tomorrow. What one group of people enjoys, another hates. What a generation embraces, the previous one does not understand. Also, your buyer persona has specific interests and technology is always offering new tools, you have to adapt to these. When Inbound Marketing started, there was no facebook. Now it's not just facebook, you have YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat -among many other options- to share your message. Not all groups of people like and use everything. Digital times demand constant updating, there is no one thing that works for everyone and with an "automatic pilot" button.
4. There is no communication within your company. The sales and marketing departments continue to work separately. If something makes this new kind of marketing different, it is the work that the sales and marketing teams must achieve together. They no longer work separately, they are no longer enemies. They need each other. If these two teams have not understand yet that they must work together in order to achieve the success that they are both looking for, you need to work more with your team.
5. It follows your plan and your methodology, not your goals. At the beginning of every campaign, the activities and tasks to be carried out are scheduled according to your goals, however, sometimes we insist more on following the plan than questioning it, even when the goals are not reached. Keep your goals a priority and make the plan work around them, not the other way around. You must take into account two things: your goals must be realistic and you must be patient. There are different deadlines for each kind of goal, you can not expect to achieve goals that are usually reached in a year, in just a few weeks. It is better to set reachable goals and then level them up as you go along, than to set almost impossible goals and then get frustrated by not reaching them. To sum up: 1) Your work plan must be guided by your goals and not by a "methodology to follow" specially if you are not clear about where you want to go or if your goals do not match your deadlines and resources. 2) Since your goals direct your work plan and not the other way around, you must always check that your work plan is going in the same direction of your goals.

Flexibility, Focus and Constant Work

These 5 mistakes that we just mentioned can be summarized in three attitudes that we must have: flexibility, focus and constant work. We can not succeed in Inbound Marketing if:

• We draw up a rigid and "untouchable" work plan
• If we do not have a clear focus (on our people and our goals) with which to compare the results of our project
• We want to assemble everything at once, automate it and never "touch" it again (automatic pilot).

In other words, make adjustments to your work plan according to:

• The analysis of your results
• The interests of your buyer persona
• The new technological tools
• Your goals and objectives

Never stop updating! Your strategies, your content, the format, the variety, the results, everything is in constant movement in the digital world, whoever stagnates, loses.

Are you Working with the right Agency?

If in spite of considering all of the above you just do not get the results that you expected, maybe you should consider if you are working with the right people and tools. Do you know how to choose an Inbound Marketing agency? Work with experts and do not waste resources (time and money) on learning, achieve success faster!