Making Inbound Work

RYAN F. LAURIN, ryan.laurin@photonics.com

How do you monitor a marketing investment? If anyone has the answer, I’ll gladly partner with you and whatever software algorithm you have so we can become billionaires. After all, look at the client base! All those Apple billboards you see on the highway in California — how do they know which iPhone was sold because of that billboard on the 101? Similarly, how does a company like Anheuser-Busch know if a convenience store purchase of their products is the result of a TV or radio ad?

Business-to-business marketers have similar concerns. Have you ever been to an airport and seen a “spam” filtering device on signs or billboards. Are companies tracking sales from those?

There’s a lot of talk about inbound marketing lately, and rightfully so. It is a great way to track and convert leads into sales. What is falling by the wayside is the talk of where those leads come from. Did someone go to your website because they saw you at a trade show? Maybe that person saw your magazine ad from a 3-year-old issue of Photonics Spectra in the waiting room of a client’s office.

When you look closely at inbound marketing, you have to remember that people need to come to you in order to be tracked. While Photonics Media has some great inbound marketing tools at your disposal for lead generation, it’s important to remember that you need to also have that push out there to lead people to your marketing/purchasing funnel. You may have the best lead tracking or CRM software in the world, but it will be useless if there is nothing to track.