5 Problems of Inbound Marketing and Their Solutions

Inbound Marketing Strategy is a marketing technique that intends to attract the customers towards the product with a very focussed approach. Compare this with outbound marketing, where we have to push the product or the brand towards potential customers in the hope of leads and sales. 

Inbound marketing is a pull-based marketing technique, where the client is “pulling” your product by showing an intent to buy. While outbound marketing is a push-based marketing technique, where the seller has to “push” the product in order to create demand. With the rise of the internet and marketing methods around it, inbound marketing has taken a central role in any business’s marketing efforts. However, as they say, nothing comes easy, and inbound marketing is no different.

In this blog, we will discuss the 5 problems of Inbound Marketing and their possible solutions.

1. Finding the right tools

The internet is flooded with Inbound Marketing tools. There are all kinds of tools, Analysis tools, Keyword research tools, scheduling tools, social listening tools, Marketing automation tools, etc.

While all these tools make your life easier by reducing your workload or providing you the right insights, choosing the right tool for your business is easier said than done.

To solve this problem of plenty, we recommend you go step by step and take one or a few things at a time. For example, if you are figuring out your social media strategy, you will need a good scheduling tool and an analytics tool. Below are the steps you can take to ease out your confusion:

1. Make a list of prospective tools
2. Make a list of parameters you will judge these tools. Parameters can be Price, Service support, User Reviews, Ratings, etc.
3. Make a comparative analysis of the tools along with the parameters
4. The tool which solves your key problem and scores highest in the parameter can be your go-to tool.

At Refrens, we use a host of tools to manage and automate our marketing including Analytics, Marketing automation, Scheduling tools, etc.

2. Takes time to deliver results

With Inbound marketing, you don’t get results overnight. You need to be patient for results and persistent in your efforts when it comes to Inbound Marketing. With Inbound Marketing, we lay a strong foundation not just to attract more leads, but to build a strong brand value also for the business. 

Let’s take an example of SEO, for SEO to even start you need a good website. Then you need to invest in On-page SEO and off-page SEO. For this, you need to have a good site map, focussed analytics, and a great backlinking strategy to name a few things. And all this will not happen overnight, you need consistent efforts to get results out of these.

To get results, you will have to be patient and persevering, more than anything else. At the same time, faster iterations will yield better results. Also, at the same time, establish the right expectations with marketing activities.

3. Too much data

There is just so much of analytics, that it is going to confuse you. If you are not clear in your head as to what metrics are you going to measure, it is only going to lead to paralysis by analysis. 

For this to be solved, you first need to have a clear or a decent idea about the metrics which you want to measure. Start with a first-order metric and then deep dive into second-order and further order metrics. To get the most out of the data, you need to have 2 clean things: Your mind and your data.

4. Internal Coherence within teams

With the high involvement of Technology in marketing, to achieve full returns of Inbound Marketing initiatives, it is important to have a close working relationship with your technology team. In most cases, the technology team will have its own roadmap for the Product, and fitting your technology requirements might be tough for them.

At the same time, the understanding of a good leader might change between sales and marketing. What the marketing team considers as a good lead, might not be a good lead in the sales team’s opinion, leading to a poor lead to sales conversion.

To solve this problem, an organization needs to invest in the right team members who understand that functions cannot work in Silos and look at the organizational goal rather than individual goals.

At the same time, regular sync ups between different departments are paramount to close any communication gaps.

5. Quality of users might not be as expected

Inbound activities like Social Media Marketing, Display ads, etc.  reach to a wider audience. A lot of people from the wider audience base might not be your target users but they might still end up coming to your website with little or no activity at all. Such users will always exist, but as your Inbound marketing gets stronger, the relative percentage of such users should reduce.

To solve this problem, make sure that you reach out to your target audience, largely speaking, since the beginning itself. Define your segments in the tools in the right way to avoid getting any unwanted traffic. 

Even if you get, iterate and re-design your strategy fast to have minimal impact of these users.

All in all, Inbound marketing is essential for the success of your business. It comes with its own challenges, but we need to be agile and iterate fast for the challenges to be solved quickly.

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Author Bio

Ashutosh works as a Product Manager at Refrens.com – India’s most powerful platform for freelancer’s finances and growth. He has helped some renowned technology companies with their product. In this blog, Ashutosh shares his views on Problems with Inbound Marketing and its solutions. You can follow Refrens.com on Twitter, LinkedIn.