Do you want your internet marketing plan to increase your social media likes this month? Or would you rather your internet marketing plan increase your revenue? Those are unfair questions, I know, but you may be surprised to learn some people do not know the obvious answer here.

Just to be clear, if your internet marketing plan is not increasing your bottom line, it is not working. What’s the point  of having 50 more likes on your Facebook page or a fancy website if they don’t meet your marketing  objectives,  increasing sales and revenue. If this is not happening in a measurable way, you’re focusing on the wrong goal.

As a business owner, most of us understand a company website is a pretty standard and necessary sales tool in today’s world. However, time and again, we hear the same sad story from clients who come to us after realizing that buying internet presence in bits and pieces resulted in too much money spent in uncoordinated, ineffective messaging. Your website is just one piece of a much larger puzzle to convert users into customers and investing in a pretty web design is simply not enough to drive new revenue.

Everyday, we are bombarded by TV, magazine and radio ads, telemarketers, email blasts, and many other traditional outbound marketing methods. Their success is very difficult to measure and historically low yield. For most consumers, these methods have become so annoying they’ve put in place solutions to stop them (spam blockers, do not call lists, DVR’s). Nevertheless, despite these impediments, outbound marketing still represents the lion's share of most companies marketing budgets.

So how can you do this differently?

You may have vaguely heard the words, inbound marketing, floating around in cyberspace somewhere, but what does it really mean? Inbound marketing is nothing more than the ability to present your products and services to potential customers (leads) who are already looking for you through a strategic, finely-tuned targeted approach that effectively acquires then nurtures those leads into actual customers. In short, inbound marketing organically engages your customers without interrupting their flow or path (i.e. annoying pop-up ads). Best of all, inbound marketing can dramatically reduce costs and produces real, measurable results. 

There are many tools and techniques that fall under the inbound marketing umbrella, but some of the key and more effective marketing solutions include SEO, Pay Per Click, targeted email and content marketing, blogging, opt-in email lists and social media to name a few. You may be somewhat familiar with some of these methods and may even be using a few. But the question is: are you using them with purpose? 

If you create and send an email blast without a clear purpose or call-to-action, it’s like throwing your precious time and money into the wind. It’s not enough if your end-user opens your email. It’s what they do after they open it that counts. Imagine sending an email to users based on specific areas of interest who actually want to receive your email, and then nurturing those users into your sales pipeline until they become your customers. No more wasted energy (and money) on audiences who have little to zero interest in ever becoming your customer (i.e. sending infant formula coupons to the granddad who shopped at Babies “R” Us once). Effective email marketing is data driven and personally relevant. In our experience, purposeful email marketing yields a 40 percent or better open rate than average and 10 times better click through rate than average.

This is just one example of how inbound marketing can increase sales and drive new revenue. Don’t wait passively by for Google to find your blog post. Create marketing content that organically generates audience desire, followed by an immediate call to action that brings you a client! Because inbound marketing produces filtered leads, you’ll find potential customers who are ready to become loyal brand ambassadors for your company with minimum effort.

Or there is the alternative: hoping someone sees your blog post and hoping they like it. 

Here’s hoping you want more!

Andrew Reilley is the Chief Experience Officer at United WebWorks, Inc. He can be reached at [email protected] or 912-231-0016.