I am a huge Iowa State Cyclone Football fan and us Cyclone fans did not have a great season. We had some early signs of success but we were leaving Jack Trice Stadium feeling let down. Regardless of the previous week, Cyclone Nation put on their cardinal and gold and showed up to cheer on the Cyclones!
After going 0-7 in their first seven games of conference play, we all didn't know what to think about Iowa State Football anymore. All of a sudden the Cyclones finished the season winning their last two conference games and gave Cyclone Nation hope for the 2014 football season!
So how does football relate to inbound marketing? Inbound marketing results do not happen over night. You need to have faith in your football team and inbound marketing! You can't try it for a few months and then abandon it. You have to stick with the inbound marketing game plan and hold out for the big bowl game (or in an inbound marketing case: a lot of site traffic and leads!)
Google has a mind of its own. The Google crawlers will take their time when it comes to indexing websites. You could have the best content for Google, but it may take a few months for you to see a good amount of top 10 keyword ranking results.
It takes time to master inbound. Unfortunately you don't have the time to create all of the content and Calls To Actions buttons and Landing Pages all in one day. It will take time to learn what your buyer persona cares about and how you will be different than your competition.
Blogging takes time. You wouldn’t publish all your blogs for the month in one day. So be patient as you publish your first set of blog articles over the initial months of your inbound marketing program. It's important to be consistent with blogging!
It takes time for good news to spread… and by good news I mean good content. Sometimes it takes a few days or weeks for a good blog article to get traction and be shared across the internet via social media, email marketing, etc.
Unless you have an extremely short sales cycle, it will take time to see how your inbound marketing has helped your sales. One of the great benefits of inbound marketing is that it gives your sales team a head start on the sales funnel. And it can also shorten your sales cycle some. But you first have to generate leads and then give your marketing time to work leads through that initial part of the funnel before it even gets to sales.
To sum these reasons up--Inbound marketing takes time but it won't let you down!
It creates good relationships with website visitors, leads and customers.
It supports good user experience… which once again helps create good relationships.
It also supports good SEO practices.
It can help you get more traffic to your website through improved SEO, content getting syndicated on other sites, and people sharing your content on social media.
It can also help you get more leads from that added traffic because you have a reason for people to give you their contact info.
It brings leads to you and you don't have to look for them.
And finally, it can turn your current customers into evangelists, because you are creating and sharing content that is helpful and interesting.
Disclaimer: You will see faster results from inbound marketing than you will see Iowa State win a National Championship!