Pull Marketing Blog

How To Put The Spark Back Into Your Inbound Marketing Efforts

As soon as you get started in Inbound Marketing, you learn that it's not the end of the journey of growing your leads and customers, it's only the beginning. But that's the problem with the slew of movies like Nicholas Sparks' Last Song or Dear John. We're so accustomed to seeing what leads up to the discovery of something wonderful and then we're left thinking that those characters are going to be happy forever.

We don't see the fights, the monotony, the banal conversations about what brand of detergent is best, or cope with the bigger questions - whose turn is it to load the dishwasher? All of this is exactly the same with Inbound Marketing. To execute an Inbound Marketing plan requires some exposure to repetitive tasks and even tasks that you would much rather avoid.

If your blog just doesn't excite you anymore or if creating videos just doesn't seem right, this blog post is for you. Here are 3 ways to help make your Inbound Marketing efforts successful even when monotony sets in:

1. Set Goals and Stick To Them

One of the best parts about Inbound Marketing is that all of your efforts are measurable. However, measuring your success is quite a bit different than sending out thousands of direct mailing postcards and waiting for your desired percentage of responses to come back in. It's those goals and ability to measure that has kept direct marketing alive for so long.

If you don't have any goals for your marketing efforts, you're hurting yourself in both the short and long term. In the beginning, your goals should be focused around how much work you can get done, especially how many blog posts you can write or how much time you put into social media. As you start to build an audience, you can set more results based goals. When you feel like you're working towards something bigger, the drive to get the work done puts energy behind what you do rather than a sense of obligation.

As you meet your goals, you have to set the bar higher and challenge yourself to do even more if you want to keep the monotony at bay.

2. Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

When you feel like you're doing the same thing over and over again, sometimes you have to switch gears completely. If all your efforts have been on blogging, it's time for you to make a fun video to illustrate some of the concepts you're trying to get across. You might be terrified by the idea of stepping in front of the camera but that's exactly why you should do it. Inbound Marketing isn't just a way to get the word out about your business. For business owners, it's also a sign of personal growth and learning about what makes your business unique.

The voice inside that tells you that your clients wouldn't appreciate a fun video is nothing but a self limitation in place. The only way to find out their real reaction, which is often much less scary than you would think, is to give something new a try. Predictability can easily take the spark out of your Inbound Marketing.

3. Get Inspiration From Elsewhere

I often see people hitting the wall with their blog posts, videos, and lead generating materials. They choose a keyword and write a relevant post about it but the inspiration always comes from their very specific niche. Following this process for content creation invites pure monotony into your Inbound Marketing. To make your Inbound Marketing more exciting, try to find inspiration in other areas of your life that interests you. If you're writing a blog post but can't get the idea of your next round of golf out of your mind, erase everything you have done and approach it from a golf angle.

The more you can infuse your interests with your desire to market and grow your business, the more you'll be able to stick with what you're doing for a long time to come. Your unique angle on a topic will also draw a new audience to your content that may not have been interested in what you had to say in the past.

Have you ever experienced a slump in your Inbound Marketing? How did you escape from it? Share your best tips with us in the comments section!

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