Over the years servicing clients large and small, we’ve come to realize that developing a marketing plan often requires a balance between competing tensions: efficiency and creativity, personal service and scale, small details and big ideas. When it comes to putting a plan to paper, often the budget governs all, and the balance is off-kilter.
Once you begin a new marketing program, it can be hard to remain patient while waiting for results. You may be wondering how long it will take to see an ROI.
It’s a fair question. How long? As in most things, it depends.
Great results are possible, but there can be a gap in timing between reality and expectations.
To set realistic expectations, let’s look at a few industry benchmarks related to the time it takes to see marketing results.
I recently dug out a bookmarked New York Times article from several years back: Small Players Seek an Alternative to the Expense of Pay-Per-Click.
The article profiles a few business owners who learn an expensive lesson. While early PPC (pay-per-click) results can be seductive, this initial success is often followed by diminishing returns. In the hunt for other avenues to qualified lead generation, the authors find inbound marketing, a path to generating more leads at a lower cost.
Today, twice as many growing businesses are using inbound marketing as when this article was written. Driving inbound marketing traffic to your website - driving unpaid traffic - is practically a mainstream philosophy.
In the early days of White Space Marketing Group, we drank that Kool-Aid, too -- but today, I have a slightly contrarian view to share.
We've found that paid ads - carefully tested and measured - can augment your inbound programs with efficient lead conversion. Here's how.
