When it comes to marketing your company, there are so many options out there, both offline and online. It is incredibly difficult to weigh the pros and cons of each one and make a decision that you can be confident will be the best use of your budget.

Every company has different needs... but here's why I choose content marketing as the way we wanted to go as well the type of marketing we wanted to invest in learning and offering to our clients.

A Quick Run-Down of the Types of Marketing I Looked At:

I'm not going to even attempt to list every type of marketing there is... but instead, here's the ones I looked at:

• Direct Mail - it gets really expensive, and you have to do a lot of it, for very little return
• Radio or Television - it's really expensive to get started with for a small business
• Email Marketing - by itself, it doesn't really do much, you might send thousands of emails, only to have a few opened, and even less that will result in business for you
• Social Media - kind of like email marketing, just posting out on social media without a plan doesn't do much good
• Business Networking - we still do this one.  Participating in networking groups can be a great way to make connections and grow your business - if you are willing to put the time into it and jump in.  The investment of time is usually the most difficult.

Why I Like Content Marketing - the Inbound Way

Here's all the reasons that I love content marketing, especially when you do it the inbound way.

• The most important factor for me was that I can track customer acquisition.  ACTUAL customers... not just a spike in website visits, or interactions on social media.  So my customers and I get real ROI.  
• Social media produces almost double the marketing leads of trade shows, telemarketing, direct mail, or Pay-Per-Click. (Source:HubSpot)
• It's an investment that continues to work.  Most marketing stops working if you stop throwing money at it.  With content marketing, you're building a library of content that keeps working for you to bring in more leads.  Think of each landing page and blog article like an individual sales person on your team.  When you write a new article, you add a new salesman, but you don't fire the old ones, they're still working too.
• More and more people are going online to research products and services before they buy.  According toNielsen, Approximately 46% of online users count on social media when making a purchase decision. 
• Instead of putting stuff out there "hit & miss" in or two places, inbound creates a loop, or funnel, or web (whatever you want to call it) that works to bring in customers and actually close them into a lead.

What the Results Look Like

For us and every client that we've implemented inbound marketing for, we're seeing they start acquiring new leads in the first month.  Almost all of them are seeing at least one new customer in the first 2 months as well.  Over the next few months, they see an increase in the number of leads and the number of customers they are getting.

They notice that the leads they are getting are more qualified, and they are able to close them into a customer easier, and faster, than other leads.

Why Content Marketing Works

It works because it's focused on the clients you want to attract.  By using content their ideal customer is looking for, we draw them in when they WANT to be found instead of using disruptive advertisements they aren't look for.