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Email marketing and marketing automation are terms that are used somewhat interchangeably, causing confusion for small businesses who are trying to decide which solution they need. This confusion stems from the fact that both solutions are based on using email as a primary way to communicate with your leads in the hope that some leads will convert into customers. In addition, many email marketing platforms are adding marketing automation features, closing the gap between the two solutions, but making it more difficult for small businesses to decide.

But in reality, the terms marketing automation and email marketing are not interchangeable and these products are designed to do different jobs.

Small business owners know they need to do something proactive with their inbound leads in order to increase the return on investment they make to attract these leads. The question is which one is the right solution for their needs? For some businesses, they will absolutely need marketing automation. For others, email marketing will be sufficient.

It’s important to understand the difference between email marketing and marketing automation and when you may want one solution over the other.

Is Email Marketing Enough?

Most small businesses understand the value of communicating with their prospects and customers. When you regularly provide educational information, special offers or news, you build trust and strengthen your relationship with people on your list.

But the challenge of email marketing is that everyone on your list receives the same content, treating all people on your list the same. Even if you use an auto-responder series of emails that are timed based on the person’s last action, such as signing up for your list, the content is generic and not personalized to their needs.

Email marketing is best used for:

• Newsletters
• Blog post distribution
• Special promotions
• Webinar invitations
• Series of timed emails after subscribers opt-in to your list

So although using email marketing to communicate to your subscribers works just fine, if you want to tailor your emails based on actions people take using content-based marketing triggers, it becomes nearly impossible without a lot of manual intervention.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation, sometimes also referred to as funnel marketing, is software that automates marketing processes to better communicate with your target audience across multiple channels and build long term relationships. It gives you the tools to manage, measure and optimize your marketing funnel.

As more businesses are employing inbound marketing to attract higher quality leads, marketing automation has become an important process to properly nurture these leads and turn them into customers.

Being able to customize your communication based on the actions someone takes, such as sign up for your list, download an eBook, take a quiz or fill out a form, enables you to stay engaged and visible to today’s buyers.

The demand for marketing automation software is getting stronger because businesses need better data to understand what the buyer needs so they can deliver it to them at the right time. With the greater demand comes more options, many targeting the small business.

How does marketing automation differ from email marketing?

Although marketing automation is based on email as the primary means of communication, a marketing automation system adds the following features on top of the email distribution platform to enable you to:

• Build out campaign specific landing pages and forms
• Track your website visitors
• Capture, score and nurture your leads
• Automate marketing activities based on marketing triggers
• Analyze and report your results
• Built in or integrated CRM capability

Do you need marketing automation?

Marketing automation platforms take your email communications further. When using inbound marketing, your goal is to attract unique visitors, turn them into leads and then nurture them into customers.

And this process takes content that satisfies the needs of the customer depending on where they are in the buying cycle.

• Awareness – whitepapers, guides, ebooks, checklists, templates and videos
• Consideration – free webinars, case studies, free samples, catalogs, buyer’s guides and FAQs
• Decision – complimentary assessment, estimates or quotes, demo, free trial

To deliver the right content to your lead at the right time, you need to address your buyer’s needs through a series of emails based on the actions they have taken. Creating this email series, or marketing funnel, requires solid planning and execution because the buying process is no longer in your control.

Which solution should you choose – email marketing or marketing automation?

It depends. It’s not one solution or the other. It’s based on what your business needs, not what the software can do.

There are many marketing automation solutions available and choosing the right one for your business will take some time and research. Your solution will be based on your needs, budget and resources.

The good news is that there is now a class of marketing automation solutions that are targeted at the small business that are simple to use and budget friendly. If you are just getting started I would recommend checking out these three. The links go to reviews on each:

• Drip/Leadpages
• ConvertKit
• ActiveCampaign

Here is a post on ActiveCampaign vs. ConvertKit that is worth a read. Expect to pay $50 to $100 per month for these solutions based on the number of subscribers.

Small businesses should take the time to choose the right solution that works for them now and grows as the business grows. If you are using inbound marketing to attract your ideal client, you should consider a marketing automation solution. If you are a small business that just wants to communicate with their customers on a regular basis, then a traditional email service provider like MailChimp will do the trick.

What type of email marketing or marketing automation is in your marketing plan for the next year?

Providing valuable lead magnets as part of your inbound marketing activities can maximize the number of targeted leads you get for your offer by providing an incentive for them to sign up. But how many sign up forms have you seen that simply ask you to “sign up” to receive their email updates?

Unless this business is known to regularly offer awesome content, it’s rare today that anyone will part with their email address without something in return.

Enter the Lead Magnet

The goal of inbound marketing is to attract your ideal client to your website through varying types of valuable content. When people get to your website via your inbound marketing efforts, they are most likely looking for something to help them solve a problem, entertain them or educate them further.

If your lead magnet satisfies one of these goals and your visitor can get it without a lot of strings attached, they will opt-in to your email list and give you permission to send them more useful content. Without a compelling and relevant lead magnet, your audience will think “great – let me add my email to one more list so I can get bombarded with more email!”

Offering that valuable resource when they opt-in to your list will help your email campaigns or blog posts be more visible in the overload of email promotions.

What are Lead Magnets?

A lead magnet, sometimes referred to as an “irresistible bribe”, provides something of value to a prospect in exchange for their contact information. In most cases, you only need their email address, but for higher end offers, you may also ask for other information.

The type of lead magnet that you should create will depend on your goals, your target audience and your product or service. What works for one business may not work for another.

However, the good news is that lead magnets don’t need to be long, complex or take weeks to create. The best converting lead magnets offer a solution to a specific problem your target audience is having quickly and that they can implement now. The more you understand your market, the more likely you will create a lead magnet that gets their attention and turns them into a lead.

10 Highly Effective Lead Magnet Ideas

Templates

People are always looking for tools to get faster results. If you have a tool that makes a process in your business more effective, turn it into a template that will be valuable to those you want to attract. Examples of useful templates:

• Marketing plan
• Email newsletters
• Sales letters
• Infographics (check out the free PowerPoint templates from Hubspot)
• Presentation design

Turn your best work into a free template.

Surveys, Quizzes, Assessments

People like to take quizzes, provide their opinions or assess something to see how they fair against others. If you:

• Are a health coach, offer a health quiz
• Want to attract small business owners, provide a business self-assessment
• Want input on your next product or service, create a survey that asks people to provide their input or opinion. (I am currently running a survey on my website for small business owners. Feel free to provide your opinion!)

In all cases, you are very likely to attract your target audience and not only get them to sign up for your email list, but also provide you with valuable information that can help you understand their needs more precisely.

Checklists

Checklists give people the “how to” information and eliminate guesswork. The best checklists are process oriented, helping people implement something faster, better or cheaper. Some ideas for checklists:

• Itemized steps for implementing some process – blog post, launching a website, developing a webinar, planting a vegetable garden
• List of materials you need to complete a home project
• Items to take with you on a trip

Swipe file

A swipe file is a collection of your best-performing and proven work that can help people be more productive. It can include:

• Sales copy
• Landing pages
• Emails
• Email subject lines
• Blog posts
• Calls to action
• Social media campaigns
• Code snippets

We all have times where we’re stuck for creative ideas, staring at a blank screen and wondering what you can say or do that will hold the attention of your reader.

By offering a swipe file of your best work that people can take and build upon, you can help people save time, get more leads, sell more product and look more professional.

Webinars and Video Training

People like free training and webinars are one of the best ways to generate new leads that turn into customers. Hosting a live webinar or offering a free video mini-course can position your business as an expert in a particular area and entice people that are interested in this topic on your email list. These lead magnets are usually the precursor to an offer, such as a masterclass, private membership community or some other type of training that people will be more likely to want once they have seen your free videos. However, webinar replays can continue to convert visitors into leads as well.

Free trials

The software industry uses free trials to attract potential buyers. For software that is hosted as a service (SaaS), free trials allow you to test the product before investing. Some companies get creative with free trials without providing a credit card. Some provide a 30 day free trial for the full product. And others provide a free version of the product that is either limited in the number of users, number of devices or features to allow you to use it for as long as you need. In all cases, this type of lead magnet gives your visitor hands on experience and allows you to get more information on the interested party.

Cheat sheet

A cheat sheet offers a quick reference to something you don’t really want to have to remember but need to reference it quickly. Some useful cheat sheets are:

• A collection of the best tools you need to get a job done
• The dimensions of all the varying social media images
• Web development cheat sheets (HTML, CSS)

White paper, report or case study

White papers or case studies can be effective lead magnets if their content provides insights into an industry or results obtained through the application of a product or service. These types of lead magnets are normally more useful for high end products or services where companies need to help justify purchases. However, if you have useful data that business owners may want to know before engaging with your company, these types of reports can help move them through the sales cycle.

Free consultation

Free consultations, strategy sessions or coaching calls are a way to have a direct conversation with someone who is interested in your services. By making these calls short and identifying what you plan to accomplish on the call, both parties can gain value from the conversation.

The downside of a free consultation is that there are those that take advantage of you and pick your brain with no intention of buying. But in many cases, helping someone out with some tips and ideas not only makes you their hero, but also helps you determine if they are a good fit for you in the first place.

eBook

The lead magnet that first comes to mind for most is the eBook. Although not the best choice in many cases, an eBook works well when it educates your target audience and solves their problem. eBooks don’t have to be lengthy but do need to cover a topic completely. The more visually appealing you can make it, the better. You can create your eBook using a PowerPoint template that is easy to edit and create graphics.

Just the beginning

Your lead magnet is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow where your rainbow is your marketing funnel. You must understand the entire end-to-end marketing campaign strategy that takes your target audience from suspect to prospect. Remember you need to promote your offer, create your landing page and then ensure your call to action gets your visitor to sign up.

What type of lead magnet will work well for your business?

Small businesses have many marketing challenges, but one of the hardest things small business owners need to do is determine what makes their business stand out from the competition and present it in a way that attracts their ideal client. Being able to differentiate your business by communicating your unique capabilities that your competition does not have is paramount to attracting your ideal client.

When someone asks you what makes you different from your competition:

• Do you answer the question confidently, telling them why you are the best at solving their key challenge?
• Does your answer help your audience feel like you understand their needs?
• Do you clearly describe that special thing that makes you their ideal choice?

When you differentiate your business, you make it memorable and credible. It helps your prospects to quickly understand what you do and what sets you apart from your competitors.

The secret to creating your differentiation, or unique selling proposition (USP) is understanding what your ideal client really wants and making sure you deliver it better than anyone else. Don’t be fooled – this exercise is not easy to do. It takes a lot of thought, brainstorming and sometimes some trial and error to see what works. Sometimes we are just too close to our businesses to truly see that differentiating quality that makes us stand out.

Plus you may find what is unique for your business evolves as your business grows.

Simple exercise to help you differentiate your business

Take some time to really think about the following and come up with a list of things you do really well. Don’t underestimate anything because something that you do that is so simple may be just the key to you standing out above all others:

• What do your clients really appreciate about your service?
• Why are long term clients still with you?
• What was one of the nicest things a client ever said about how you conduct business?

The challenge for service businesses is to clearly identify what you do best in a way that is visible to your target. Consultants, accountants, financial planners, coaches, designers, web developers and other service oriented businesses appear to all be the same: they offer the same services for about the same price. Stand out by really understanding what you do best and exploit it. Or come up with something unique that adds value over your competition that you can offer.

8 ways to make your business stand out

Use the following ideas to help you determine that one unique, differentiating quality that only your business has:

• Narrow your target market – By specializing in a specific customer niche, you can focus on the skills or services that uniquely benefit that customer. Being the best to provide a solution to their unique situation enables you to maximize revenue and build stronger customer relationships.
• Focus on superior customer service – Aim to create the best experience for your customers. From your initial proposal through final delivery of your product or service, be sure your customers are treated as if they were the only one you have.
• Solve a problem – Find out what common problems your clients have and be the best at solving them. Make your solutions turnkey so you can solve their problems faster and with better results.
• Be innovative – Continuously try to improve your customer facing processes to deliver better results to your target audience. If your services are the same as your competition, make the way you deliver them, work with the client or get to the solution better or faster than the competition can deliver.
• Create offers that are too hard to ignore – Be creative with your service packages and add so much value that it’s hard to say no. If you offer training, give people access to a free module or a money back guarantee. If you have a membership site, offer a free trial for a month to try it out.
• Be known as the expert in your field – Build a reputation as the expert in your field through your blog posts, books, videos, training and other information products. People who truly have a problem to solve will want to work with the expert.
• Make it easy to do business with you – Work on your business model to make it easy as possible to work with you. Provide access to you via text or email 24×7. Simplify your contract or instead, use an engagement letter. Do whatever it takes to make working with you easy and convenient.
• Create a unique business model based on your values – Be transparent to your customers about things you do and why. A couple things I’ve done in my business is that I don’t mark up other vendors products and services and I don’t join affiliate programs for anything involved with marketing so I can remain completely objective when I recommend them to my clients.

Notice I didn’t put price in the list as a way to differentiate yourself. Although price can be used as a differentiating factor, it really isn’t ideal in a service-based business. Who really wants to be the cheapest? Cheaper can evoke perceptions of lower quality, less breadth of knowledge or a less stable business environment.

What makes your business different?

With all the tools, gadgets and platforms, the trend is to spend a lot of time on marketing execution. But one thing we must not forget is that regardless of the channel of execution, you still need the basics of your marketing strategy in place or all of your efforts will be wasted.

Take the time to determine your strengths and communicate them to your target audience in a way that gets them to notice you above all else. Once you have defined and can demonstrate your unique difference, be sure to incorporate it into your messages everywhere.

What is your unique difference that makes your customers want to work with you?

Just because you’ve built it, doesn’t mean they will come

You finally have a powerful website that you are proud to show off, with messages that clearly explain how you help your clients and the value you provide. Now you need to increase website traffic in order to gain visibility, grow your email list, sell your product or offer your services to the right audience.

Getting traffic is hard and doesn’t happen without you doing something to make it happen. The following 10 marketing activities will drive traffic to your website and turn it into a powerful hub for your web presence.

1. Optimize your website around your top keywords

Before you do anything else to increase website traffic, you need to spend some time optimizing your content. Understand how people search for your products or services and then develop a keyword list that you use for all of your marketing activities.

Optimize each page of your website around one keyword phrase. Use the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin to make sure you use it in your web page title, the meta description tag and appropriately throughout your content. Now dive deeper into keyword research and create a list that can be used for blog post topics and optimize each of them as well.

2. Blog regularly

Blogging is not about churning out a lot of words. Blogging is about providing helpful content that attracts the right audience. If you know what your audience cares about, what pain they are in or what challenge they need help with, offer a solution through your blog.

To ensure your content will make its way into the hands of those interested in what you have to say:

• Gather topics on what your audience needs and what questions they ask.
• Put your editorial calendar together that includes topics, dates to write, dates to publish and focused keyword phrase.
• Begin with a compelling headline that will entice the human reader first. A good headline will also help the search engines lead your audience to you.
• Tell a story with your writing so people stay interested.
• Make your writing easy to read and scan for important points. Use headlines and lists.
• Add an interesting picture that reinforces your message.
• Include a call to action, even if it is simply to leave a comment, offer other ideas or share the post.

Don’t underestimate the power of blogging. It is a lot of work, but the value it provides to showcase your expertise and increase website traffic is worth the effort.

3. Promote and syndicate your content

Don’t let your quality content sit dormant on your blog.

• Promote your content on your Facebook Page and then share it on your personal profile.
• Post your content on your LinkedIn profile and LinkedIn company page.
• Create an image post on Twitter to make your content more visible in the Twitter stream.

Syndicate your content to legitimate sites like Business2Community to distribute your content to a much larger audience, making you visible to their readers and providing inbound links and social shares. Most times, content posted on Business2Community gets more visibility and shares than content posted on my blog, but those shares lead people to my website to find out more.

4. Publish on LinkedIn

LinkedIn provides a publishing platform, Pulse, to all members. You can post original content within your area of expertise and interests to help you reach more of your audience with your content. This content becomes part of your professional profile and is searchable both on LinkedIn and through search engines.

When you publish a long-form post (not just share an update), your connections receive a notification in real time that contains the title of the post only. So remember: begin with a compelling headline that will entice the human reader. You only get a moment to attract your connection’s attention.

LinkedIn is definitely a resource for publishing content if you are a B2B business. But don’t underestimate the power of publishing content on LinkedIn for consumer-oriented businesses as well. Your connections are people who might need what you have to offer.

5. Offer to guest post

There are a lot of benefits of guest blogging in addition to helping you increase website traffic. You can gain more visibility with your audience, establish credibility and get more backlinks to your website from reputable sources. But it is not for everyone. Writing is hard. And it takes a lot of time.

For most business owners, having enough content to support your inbound marketing strategy is challenging enough. Ensuring you have unique, quality content for guest posting only adds to the challenge.

But if you are a writer and want to increase your digital footprint with additional content on high ranking websites, put together a strategy and learn how to succeed at guest posting. Otherwise, your efforts could be ignored.

6. Host webinars

Whether live or on demand, free webinars are an excellent way to increase website traffic. People are always looking to gain knowledge and offering a free webinar is your chance to share your knowledge with an audience that is already looking for that information.

Webinars are cost effective and can be multipurpose. Live webinars should always be recorded and turned into a powerful lead magnet to drive even more traffic. Promote your webinar across all of your social sites and consider using paid social media advertising to gain more targeted visibility.

7. Record a podcast

There are more people that would prefer listening to educational content rather than reading it. Those who have to commute or simply want something other than music for their workout will subscribe to podcasts if they are interested in your topic. This allows busy business owners to make better use of their time spent driving or while working out.

Promote your podcasts as you would your blog posts – on social media and out to your email list – and drive them back to your website to get transcripts or links that were referenced in the audio.

8. Create a powerful web presence

Your web presence does not end with your website. You need to take control of other online properties that list your business. Google My Business and the Better Business Bureau and are a good start, creating credible listings for your business and providing inbound links. Depending on your industry, InsiderPages, Merchant Circle and Yelp are others. Both directories and review sites are valuable properties in building a strong web presence because the number of citations are now taken into consideration for rankings.

9. Invest in Facebook advertising

Given the decline in organic reach of Facebook Page posts, putting a little money into Facebook paid advertising can drive better, more qualified traffic to your website. You absolutely need a strategy before you just decide to promote a post. Make sure you know exactly what you want a visitor to do when they click on the link you provide. Paying for traffic without a strategy can be a waste of money. To get started:

• Learn about the Facebook Ads Manager and Power Editor. These are essential tools to create successful Facebook Ad campaigns.
• Take note of advertisements that come through your timeline. Get some ideas you can use for your ads.
• Experiment with Facebook Audience Insights and building custom audiences. This allows you to target your ads to a more suitable audience for your content.
• Understand the entire advertising process. Start with a strategy, call to action, landing page, ad content and ultimate goal of the ad (website traffic, qualified leads, visibility).
• Understand remarketing and how to use it without stalking. You can set up remarketing audiences in Facebook by installing a tracking pixel on your website so you can continue to market to those who visited your website.

As you can see, there is a lot to learn but getting it right can be an effective way to increase website traffic. When you are starting out, seek help from someone experienced in Facebook advertising to be sure you are doing things properly.

10. Invest in other paid advertising

In addition to Facebook, paid search and other social media advertising are more ways to increase website traffic. Whether you choose Google AdWords, Twitter cards or display advertising on appropriate directories, first determine your goals and select the channel that is most appropriate.

Paid advertising is an effective option for driving traffic when you have a new website until some of the other methods above kick in. Depending on your business, you may continue with a paid search strategy as long as the return on investment is worth it. Once your website begins to rank well in search engine results for your top keywords, you can slow down or pause your campaigns entirely.

And as with Facebook advertising, it helps to engage a resource that specializes in the specific platform you are using to ensure you get the most out of your efforts.

Which options to choose to increase website traffic?

Look at your marketing plan and determine which of the above traffic building ideas will work for you. You probably can’t do them all, so pick the ones that make the most sense and get them working for you first.

Share your secrets: What other cost-effective ideas do you have to drive people to your website?

The most frequent question I get asked by small business owners is how to simplify inbound marketing when faced with limited resources. Inbound marketing seems so overwhelming with all the effort that needs to go into creating great content, sharing it on social media and optimizing that content for search engines.

But the value of inbound marketing for small businesses can outweigh the challenges and should be included as part of your marketing activities.

Inbound Marketing – the What and Why

Inbound marketing is the process of attracting your ideal client with quality content to create brand awareness and attract new business.Your content, whether it is in the form of a blog, ebook, webinar, presentation, audio or video, needs to:

• Be optimized to be found in search engines
• Be shared through social media and email marketing activities
• Educate your ideal client on how you can help them satisfy a need or solve a problem.

Inbound marketing offers many benefits:

• Build your expert reputation
• Generate inbound links for greater search engine visibility
• Develop relationships with prospects and customers
• Strengthen search engine optimization efforts
• Increase brand awareness
• Generate qualified leads at a lower cost per lead

And although inbound marketing can be a rather large undertaking, you can focus your efforts to simplify inbound marketing and make it work for your business.

Inbound Marketing – the How

The following 6 steps can help you simplify inbound marketing and get the results you are looking for. Understand what you want to do with inbound marketing and why you want to do it, and take it one step at a time.

Identify your goal

What do you want to accomplish with inbound marketing?

• Create more brand visibility by ranking higher in the search engines?
• Generate more leads?
• Convert more leads into customers?

Goals need to be measurable but achieving your goals are not totally in your control. So if you want to generate 100 new quality leads a month, then you need to identify what it will take to help you achieve that number. Goals may take several different activities to achieve.

Optimize your web presence

Before you begin any inbound marketing activity, you must have a quality well optimized web presence so that your marketing activities are effective. Your web presence is made up of your:

• Website (which must support mobile devices)
• Social media profiles
• Business directory listings

You should be in control of them all and they should consistently project your brand. Don’t take short cuts in this important area as first impressions count. If you haven’t developed your powerful web presence, do that before you launch marketing campaigns.

Create your lead magnet

First time visitors probably won’t buy from you because they are still researching a solution and not entirely sure what you offer is what they need. Plus giving you something of value – their contact information – isn’t going to happen for free.

But in order to grow a quality email list, you need time to build trust, instill confidence in your expertise and build a relationship.

Enter the lead magnet.

A lead magnet is a free incentive to get people to give you their contact information. Your lead magnet needs to be something that your target audience values that ties into the products or services you provide.

The right magnet for your business depends on what your customer values. They don’t have to be lengthy, complex or time-intensive to create. They do, however, need to be useful.

Lead magnets come in many forms: checklists, templates, tools, infographics, presentations, guides, coupons, free estimates, webinar replays, quizzes, or surveys.

Determine what your audience would value and create the lead magnet that will help you grow your email list. You may want several lead magnets to use at different times to attract an audience at a varying points in the purchase process.

Build and nurture your email list

Now that you have your lead magnet attracting your target audience to subscribe to your list, nurture your list by sending valuable content that helps them learn more about your expertise. Nurturing is letting your subscribers get to know you and your brand through communication that offers value, not a sales pitch.Send them your blog posts, a personalized newsletter, a tutorial, an infographic or other useful content and supports the reason they subscribed to your list in the first place.

Segment your list to deliver information that is relevant to the subscriber. Segmenting your list helps you get better open and click rates. If you only collect email addresses, you have fewer options but you can still segment based on signup date or subscriber activity. If you do have more information available, you can choose other ways to segment.

One segment you absolutely should have is your customers! This is the “delight” phase of inbound marketing. Those who already do business with you should be one of your prime focus areas. Communicate with your customers and offer them special deals. Provide awesome customer service and quick responses to their questions so they can only brag about how wonderful you are. Happy and satisfied customers who understand the value you offer will not hesitate to refer new customers to you.

Identify your top social media channels

No small business needs to be active on all social media channels. Your choice of social media platforms will be different whether your business is B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer). You need to find your audience on a particular social media platform or you probably shouldn’t be there. Be smart about where you spend your time so that you don’t spread yourself too thin.

With the many ways to engage with your audience on social media, you do need a strategy. Each platform has its “rules of engagement”. Organic reach has deteriorated and pay to play is now mandatory. Other options for engaging with your audience now include private groups, live streaming and content syndication.

The three major players, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, all offer small businesses a distribution channel for your content. If you are a visual business, Pinterest and Instagram are also a good choice. And don’t forget YouTube for posting and optimizing your videos.

In all cases, you need to understand when you should post and when you should pay for visibility. Choose the most appropriate social media platform, create an ad to drive people to claim your lead magnet and get the lead generation engine running. Just make sure you are sending visitors to a high quality landing page that doesn’t chase the visitor away.

Create an editorial calendar

A robust editorial calendar is how you simplify inbound marketing. Lay out your content with their calls to action and distribution strategy in a calendar. Even if you only plan one piece of content per month, plan on how you will share it and if you can rework the content into other types of media.

For example, if you are giving a presentation or webinar, record it. Post snippets of the video on YouTube, embed them into a blog post and summarize the presentation. Send out a replay of the webinar as a lead magnet to get more subscribers. Transcribe the QA and turn the answers into another blog post.

Most businesses have a lot of content available to them, they just don’t realize it. Work with someone who can help you see the value of the information you have and how it can be turned into content for your inbound marketing strategy.

Eliminate the overwhelm

The best advice I can give to those wanting to implement inbound marketing for their business is to focus on a few activities that help you achieve your goals, outsource when necessary and not get distracted with all the possibilities. Being able to focus your marketing is important to those of us who need to deliver client projects while continuing to market our businesses.

How do you simplify inbound marketing for your business with limited resources?