Written by: The decision to handle inbound marketing with your in house marketing team is understandable. After all, online marketing tools are accessible, easy to use, and free in many cases. Just because your team has access to great tools doesn't mean your in house marketing people have the expertise to use them effectively.
Think of car repair. Would you replace an important component like your timing belt on your own car just because you have online access to the manufacturer's specs and YouTube videos demonstrating the steps? Probably not. It's more time efficient and cost effective for you to hire an experienced mechanic than to burn billable hours, lose use of your car for long periods of time, and possibly end up with a vehicle that doesn't work at all.
Many B2B companies have a capable sales and marketing team, but capable with trade shows. Even B2B marketers can feel like fish out of water when running an online lead generation campaign.
6 common mistakes in house marketing people make with their online marketing programs
1. You blow through your Google Adwords budget
It's in Google's best interests to make it easy to spend your budget. If you don't aggressively manage your paid search campaigns, monitor effectiveness, and target ads correctly, you can wake up one day with a huge bill and no leads to show for it. We helped one client who's in house marketing team had been burning thousands of dollars per year on useless clicks because they were bidding on terms that were too broad.
2. You don't attribute sales to sources
Analysis and tracking are key to understanding ROI. If you can't attribute sales and leads to their sources (such as email lists, organic search traffic, pay-per-click, or your website) you will never know what tactics are bringing you customers.
3. You don't take the time to do proper reporting
It is easy to get caught up in simply executing your marketing tactics and ignore proper reporting. It is this process, however, that gives you the information and insight you need to learn which tactics are driving real measurable business. Even well-executed tactics will fail your campaign if your strategy isn't sound.
4. You blindly stick with the tactics the CEO likes
"That's the way we've always done it" is perhaps the most damaging phrase in business today. The reality is, failing to adapt to new trends will lose you money, leads, and in some cases search engine credibility. An example: Three years ago, link building was a popular choice for improving organic search rank. After Google implemented a series of algorithm changes, link building is a riskier tactic. Some sites' ranks have even been punished by pushing an outdated link-building strategy.
5. You lose your creativity
After your in house marketing team has brainstormed and implemented all of their best ideas, the trap is to settle for the ideas that were discarded the first time around instead of doing the hard work of pushing them to the next level.
When a prospect visits your trade show booth, they will validate your offerings and abilities on your website. Many times, your website will be the first touchpoint with your comapny. Does your trade show centric marketing team have the knowledge and the creativity to generate leads from your website?
6. Your blog gets neglected (or you don't have one at all)
Online marketing is relentless. Blogging, monitoring Adwords, and social media all require constant attention. In house marketing teams simply grow fatigued or overwhelmed. As a result, they don't have time to reflect and brainstorm new topics, let along write your blog consistently.
To evaluate whether keeping your online presence with in house marketing is really a money or time-saving benefit, you need to honestly consider the above.
- Do your marketers think your website is vital to lead generation?
- Do you think your website can generate as many leads as other tactics you've been doing for 10+ years?
- Do you have the expertise to design online campaigns to maximize ROI and deliver measurable analytics?
- Do you really have the time and energy to keep on top of your online marketing day in and day out?
- Will you put the effort into analysis and reporting?
If the answer is "no," starting and failing with in house marketing can actually cost you more than you would pay for an experienced consultant. If you wouldn't do it for your car, don't do it for you most important asset -- your business!
Find out if your B2B company website can contribute to your sales goals with an inbound marketing assessment.
