In episode #568, Eric and Neil talk about the difficulty of inbound marketing. Tune in to hear why inbound marketing isn’t an exact science and how you can use it to your advantage. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: How You Are Doing Inbound Marketing All Wrong [00:34] Eric recently lost a deal to a content marketing agency. [00:47] The other agency was promoting processes and the execution plan was to create 500-600 word blog posts once per month. [01:04] Eric believes this was a weak approach, as 500-600 words is brief and you must provide quality overall. [01:44] Inbound marketing is not an exact science. [02:00] Generally, the formula for this unpredictable aspect of marketing is: you put in X and get back ? [02:33] In the long run you can make it more predictable. [03:00] Content marketing is building a lot of goodwill over time and you’re not trying to see an ROI immediately. [03:35] Being omnipresent, running ads, building out a funnel is all part of inbound marketing. If you’re able to build a machine like that, then you can stack paid ads on top. [03:48] ClickFunnels is doing something like $5-6 million a month because of his tight inbound marketing strategy. [04:25] When thinking about inbound marketing, you have to look at it as, are you willing to make an investment to potentially build up goodwill for a brand? [04:33] Eric spends $25,000/month on inbound marketing. [04:40] Some of that money includes salaries for content marketers. [05:10] For each closed deal, it costs Eric’s company $15,000 and they bring in at least $30,000. [05:58] Single Grain was getting 3,000-4,000 visits per month and all the leads were coming from Neil. It took two years to get that site rolling. [07:00] If you create junky content, you’re not going to get ROI, you’ll only lose money. [07:58] Think of inbound marketing as karma points and don’t focus too hard on ROI. [08:08] That’s all for today! [08:10] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway! Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.