There are many good reasons to consider a marketing approach that incorporates inbound marketing and inbound sales, not least because the inbound methodology neatly aligns your online presence with your buyer's journey to find a solution to meet their needs.

If aligning your organisation to the buyers' journey and driving more cost effective growth is not compelling enough, then you should also consider that if you are not "doing" inbound, it's almost certain your competitors will be, if they have not done so already. Here's why...

Today's buyers research and identify possible solutions on the internet, and self educate before engaging with your sales team, therefore claiming those search terms that buyers are using and making them your own is critical to gaining leads online.

Unfortunately you are not alone in this 'digital search term land grab'.  Your competitors are trying to make sure they rank higher than you when a prospect searches for solutions, and delaying your adoption of inbound will make it much harder and more expensive for you to rank for those important search terms in the long run.

Inbound marketing takes time. It takes time for search engines to index pages on your site, and verify that you are providing valuable and relevant information, and it takes time to develop social media reach, and build your audience on social media channels.

Generally, if your website is new or you have launched new product pages then it could take 3 - 4 months to see the first signs of significant traffic, and 6 - 7 months for serious traffic. Although it's not impossible to make this happen sooner with a lot of effort. 

So if you have a 3 - 4 month head start on your competition, you have a competitive advantage. Flip it around: if your competitors have the lead on you, then it's going to take longer to get ranked (assuming your competitors are maintaining their momentum). The cost of inaction can be painful, in terms of:

• Lost opportunities
• Competition
• Stunted Business Growth

For some industries where the landscape is highly competitive there are small windows of time to claim those high search rankings. The benefits in terms of lead generation, business growth and competitiveness are significant ... so where do you start?

The good news is that inbound marketing is a proven methodology, which is delivering business benefits to a range of organisations in different sectors... implemented correctly it will deliver a significant positive financial impact to your organisation. HubSpot who invented the inbound methodology has 22,000 customers worldwide reaping rewards.

Starting on the inbound journey may appear to be daunting, and whilst there is some 'heavy lifting' to be done in the first few months, it doesn't mean that your leads will dry up whilst that is happening.  We'll work with you to make sure that doesn't happen!

Intellegentia's focus is on creating a robust sales pipeline for our customers.  We do that by running other demand generation campaigns alongside implementing inbound.  We set up the infrastructure to create a sustainable sales and marketing machine. And we will improve your SEO - all at the same time!

Want to get started? Contact us to take those first steps towards Inbound.

Want to know more about Inbound Marketing? Read one of our industry specific guides: