You’re working 110% of the time, but how do you maximize your inbound marketing strategy to receive the best ROI? It’s not enough just to exist as a unique and promising business.  It’s not even enough just to say that you know the benefits of inbound vs outbound marketing.

Today, customers need to be led to your business, but they can’t know you’re actually leading them there. Not fully grasping this nuance is the number one reason why inbound marketing strategies fail. Here are the most effective inbound marketing strategies for maximizing your ROI.

How Not to Fail at Inbound Marketing

1. All Press is Not Necessarily Good Press (Write Relevant Content)

A good content marketing strategy is materialistic. Meaning that you have to choose quality content over quantity of content. Yes, we know that content is king, but if you’re not focusing on the right kind of content – your customers won’t be interested in it. You can write as much as you want, but if your content is not relevant no one will take the time to read it.

2. Lack of Focus (Target and Segment)

Your content marketing strategy needs focus and direction or else you risk “the blind leading the blind.” Offer a clear and cohesive message that your audience can understand and identify with. Content marketing relies heavily on storytelling as a vehicle for communication. If you’re not telling a compelling story to the right audience, you’ll be shouting to the masses. Write with your target audience in mind and have a clear objective for why you are writing. Remember that buyer personas are crucial in guiding and aligning your content to attract the right prospects. Organizing your content into campaigns that target different buyer personas will spark increased qualified lead generation.

3. Promote Yourself (Work Every Angle – or Channel)

In this industry, there’s no such thing as selling out, especially when you’re up against companies with million dollar marketing budgets. Maximize your inbound marketing strategy through cross-platform promotion, AdWords, PPC, etc. A strong social media marketing and promotion strategy is essential to bridging the gap between you and your target audience. It’s all about engagement, re-posts, sharing, and spreading the knowledge. Your business should be highly social and someone with the right interpersonal web skills should be managing your social media channels.

Read: The Many Reasons You Need a Social Media Management Company

4. Expand and Expound (Build Your Empire)

One of the most effective marketing strategies is to grow your perceived industry expertise by creating content hubs. Pick a theme and go with it. Content hubs are multiple pieces of content built around one umbrella topic or key campaign phrase. Organize your content in a logical manner. Your business will gain more trust as an industry leader with more professional and engaging content.

5. SEO Is Everyone’s Best Friend

SEO is your diamond, your main squeeze, your best friend. It’s precious and essential. Put forth the greatest effort perfecting your Search Engine Optimization strategy and reap the rewards for years to come. Build the best SEO keywords list, employ the best tags and #hashtags, optimize your site map, and create amazing meta descriptions. Never ever ever stop refining your keyword usage, always look for ways to improve. With a heavy SEO inbound marketing strategy you’ll grow organic search results like never before.

6. Stay on Track (Measure Your Metrics and Analytics)

What people are saying about you and how you stack up to the competition is important. In marketing, the whole Internet is your stage and the only way to check-up on how your inbound marketing campaign is doing is to track it. Make sure you’re hitting those marks and meeting your goals.

Read: Why a Marketing Analytics Strategy is Essential

7. Successful Inbound Marketing Strategies Make It Work (Together)

Whoever separated the Sales and Marketing departments should’ve been fired.Aren’t we all working towards the same end goal? To convert? Both departments feed off one another, they need each other. Learn to work together and you’ll increase your conversion rate immensely. It’s all about the Lead Nurture-Sales Cycle. Learn it. Love it. Smarketing = Sales + Marketing.

8. Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing 

Outbound may be dead, but certain aspects or trends always come back into style. Inbound marketing is what it is because of traditional, outbound marketing. Remember, no single entity invented inbound marketing, we are all still perfecting and updating our methods after years and years of technological progress. There will always be fresher, more updated takes on all styles of marketing. The best methods learn from each other and hybridize to incorporate the all-around best practices in the industry. Just remember to always keep it fresh by taking time to evaluate and re-evaluate.

Read: 10 Reasons Why Traditional Marketing Doesn’t Work in 2016

9. It Takes Time to Make a Thing Go Right

You won’t become an industry celebrity overnight. Inbound marketing is a long game. The benefit of a long game is that your growth will amass over time, allowing you more manageable success and numbers. Invest today, reap the benefits later. Plant the seed and you’ll have a bountiful harvest soon enough.

10. Plan it Right the First Time

But always keep tweaking it. Perfect your own brand of perfection. Remember, your message will take some time to sink in. Make some noise, shake a few trees, and watch what happens next. Use the data and feedback to keep perfecting your strategy and keep getting it right.

Now that you know what tactics you should be focusing on and where most businesses fail, how do you know whether you’ll be fated to be one of those failures? What’s the best way to get the maximum return on your marketing ROI? Measure the right KPIs and track your performance. 

Read our Free eBook: Choosing Marketing Metrics for an Accurate ROI Formula

11. (Bonus!) Hire an Inbound Marketing Agency

You’re a smart business person. You know the ins and outs of your product and services. You know why you’re the best and why customers should choose you. When you heard about this new inbound marketing method, you may have gotten a little excited. You can handle a couple blog posts a week, maybe a few social media posts, on-site SEO, PPC, Google Adwords right? Who are you kidding? You want a tried and true, trusted Inbound Marketing Agency to handle your account so that you can focus and handle the business side of things. There tends to be a huge disconnect between business owners and business marketing techniques.