Why Your Inbound Content Marketing Can’t Wait

So you have decided that you want the warm leads that inbound content marketing brings, but sitting down to plan your content schedule and getting the writing done just keeps getting push to the next month.

Here are five reasons your inbound content marketing planning can’t keep waiting

1. You want to drive leads in the short term and the long term.

Realistically, it takes some time to ramp up, drive qualified buyers and then harvest leads. If you start this week, you are going to need a 30-90 day ramp to get results.

It can work more quickly if you put in more work up front, but if you start the last week in August, your lead stream is going to start in earnest sometime in November.

If you have a 90-day sales cycle, that means that if you wait a week, you are essentially missing out on your next quarter’s goals.

2. Inbound Marketing is a zero-sum game.

In traditional marketing, if you wait two months to do a mass mailing, it has no specific impact to you or your prospect. With inbound marketing, if you wait two months, you give your competition (who may be ahead of you today) 60 more days to optimize their site so it will be more difficult and potentially more expensive to get higher rankings.

3. Inbound Content Marketing is growing like crazy.

Lots of people are waking up to the fact that utilizing 21st century web techniques, you can drive more leads. Content that tells stories making topics real to people help build trust and generate sales-ready leads for your business.

It moves like a bullet train out of Tokyo. Waiting 60 days means you are competing with 100,000 more blogs and 500,000 more blog articles. Waiting a few months means you compete with more people.

4. Your customers are back from vacation next week and they are ready to buy.

They need the information now when they are searching for it, not when you are ready to publish it.

5. Social media is moving like a fast dog after a meat truck.

Only 1% of companies in North America are using social media for driving leads. Start today and get first mover advantage. Start in October and you run the risk of being the fourth company in your industry to try to compete for the same eyeballs.

You can always find an excuse for delaying the start but remember that you ignore inbound marketing at your own peril. The floodgates are opening and the process is going mainstream.