Training for Gold
Align Your Goals and Marketing Plans

By Bernie Borges

Inbound marketing (aka, Internet marketing) requires ongoing planning, implementation, commitment, metrics, experimenting, a content marketing mindset, and a relationship building mindset. There is no cruise control in inbound marketing. You can never let up. Never!  However, your inbound marketing goals must align with your marketing plans in order to achieve a winning strategy.

To illustrate this point with a little color, I’ll use a metaphor. I love metaphors. I use metaphors all the time with friends, colleagues and with clients to explain concepts. One of my favorite metaphors compares inbound marketing and athletics.

As the owner of an inbound marketing agency whose business is based on helping clients implement successful Internet marketing strategies, I have learned that successful Internet marketers are a lot like successful athletes.

No matter the sport, athletes must train to get in shape. And, they must continue to train to stay in shape. Once an athlete reaches her desired level of conditioning and performance, she can’t let up without risking being surpassed by a competitor. We’ve all seen once-great athletes grow complacent and suffer defeat by a challenger who seemingly came from nowhere. Although an athlete’s God-given talent is crucial to her success, heart is just as big a factor as raw talent. Heart has everything to do with hard work, tenacity and commitment to ongoing training.

Athletes compete at various levels. Young athletes compete locally. As their athletic abilities are sharpened with practice and performance they may compete in regional, state, national or international competitions. An athlete whose aspiration is to compete and win a gold medal in the Olympics must make a far deeper commitment to training than an athlete whose highest goal is to win a competition against local athletes. In the same way, the marketer who desires to achieve success nationally or internationally in a competitive market must do more than the marketer who wants to compete locally in a less crowded market.

When the Find and Convert team helps clients create inbound marketing strategies, we sometimes hear a marketer describe a goal which is comparable to winning gold at the Olympics, but the plan doesn’t include the level of commitment (resources and budget) needed to reach a gold-medal Olympic sized goal.

Marketers should examine their goals and ask themselves if the goal and the plans align. If a gap exists between the commitment required and the resources allocated, marketers should adjust to close the gap. For example, setting out to rank #1 for a one word, highly competitive keyword in Google such as “outsourcing” is a tall order. Google lists 40 million results for this word. If you provide “outsourced software development services,” optimizing for the latter phrase is less competitive with 12 million results. If your specialty (or one of them) is “SaaS outsourced development services,” Google lists just 442,000 results. To compete for this phrase in organic search engine rankings doesn’t require an Olympic size commitment of resources and budget. The search frequency for this keyword phrase is lower than the previous two, but 1) if you don’t have the Olympic size resources to pull it off, it’s moot, 2) do you really need a gzillion visitors to your website, or will a small number of highly qualified visitors do the job?

I certainly understand it is sometimes difficult for marketers to back down from Olympic size goals that senior management has committed to, but it is equally important that marketers take the field with the plan and resources needed to achieve lofty objectives. Remember, that few athletes ever make it to the Olympics. Yet, there are many fine athletes with winning strategies competing in other playing fields. 

One of the first ingredients of inbound marketing success is a realistic view of the commitment needed to succeed. Just as athletes succeed at the top levels when their commitment and natural talents match their desired goals, creators of inbound marketing plans succeed when their plans and their goals align.

About the Author
Bernie Borges is the founder and president of Find and Convert, an Inbound Marketing agency specializing in search engine optimization and social media marketing strategies.  Bernie is a frequent speaker, blogger and podcaster on these topics and author of Marketing 2.0, a book about social media (inbound) marketing strategies.
More Information: Find and Convert