It’s days like this that I pinch myself and ask…am I really dreaming?
Is my small business really still growing at this rapid of a pace…in THIS economy?
Did I really just have the day that I just had?
The answers would be No, Yes, and Yes!
I am going to sum up today as one of life’s little victories.
I mean there are good days, and then there are GOOD days.
Today was one of them.
I share this story with you today not to brag, or rub it in anybody’s nose, but rather to open some eyes.
If any one of these given scenarios sounds like you, then this blog is just what the doctor ordered:
- My sales are flat, or down, and I can’t figure out how to turn it around.
- It’s the economy, nobody is spending, and I’m just going to hopefully ride things out.
- I know I need to do something different with my marketing, but I’m just not sure what to do.
- I recently redesigned my website, but it’s still not making the phone ring enough.
- I’m spending a lot of money of paid clicks, and just not seeing the results.
- I’m doing the social media thing-a-ma-bob, and I’m somehow sliced bread is still the next best thing!
People, if more than one of those scenarios applies to you, have no fear, I was right there with you. Luckily I was introduced to inbound marketing strategies, soaked it up like a sponge, tested it, measure it, and developed the little nuances that add up to big results.
I haven’t looked back since, and neither should you. Every day you wait is another day that a competitor is potentially creating content, getting found, converting visitors, taking market share, and eating your lunch!
Don’t worry though, it’s early in the game. Inbound marketing methodology is still very young, just as web 2.0.
There’s lots of room for everyone. When my company started with inbound marketing, there were already quite a few sign and graphics companies using inbound marketing strategies.
I didn’t care. Still don’t today. Most truly aren’t competitors, some are even my inbound coaching clients. In the end, there is more than enough business to go around.
The Day of an Inbound Marketer
I’m an early riser, and today was a 5:30am day. Shower, shave, dress, and then breakfast.
You may not know this about me, but I am a avid cereal mixer. I like to have at least four to six different kinds of cereal on hand at a time, and will mix no less than two to three of them. I consider myself the chef of cereal cuisine. Okay, TMI, I know. Back to the story.
6:15am check email, Twitter, and the previous days inbound analytics. There were six website leads that came in overnight. Not too shabby for being asleep when they arrived!
Inbound analytics look good. Traffic is up 10% month-to-date. Leads are slightly down this month, but trending towards positive territory.
My Morning
7:30am arrive at the office. Get organized for the day and do a little follow up. When the team arrives at 9am we have a production meeting.
A little later we get a walk-in, which is not typical for my business. I notice on his truck that he’s local, so I figured he saw our roadside sign. Nope. Found us on the internet. Real nice guy. Ends up getting a vehicle wrap design and partial wrap for his truck.
While the work order is being drafted for his vehicle wrap, a current customer walks in to pick up his brand new box truck wrap. They absolutely love it! Guess what? Had found us on the web as well. They sit tight while we wrap up with the walk-in.
The new customer is all set and scheduled for his design consultation, so now we can focus our attention on the guys picking up their box truck. Like I said, they were absolutely thrilled with how it turned out which makes me smile from ear to ear!
We already took some photo’s of the completed wrap, so I ask if they wouldn’t mind if shooting a 30 second customer testimonial video. Without even a hesitation, they say let’s do it, and off we go.
You might be wondering, why is Adam talking about shooting a customer testimonial video? Remember, we’re talking about inbound marketing here; putting out little content magnets that are optimized to get found. The video will be used in many ways to help get us found…and make the phone ring! It will certainly give the client some great exposure as well.
We shoot the video in one take with my iPhone. Rich is an absolute pro, and I practically give him a bear hug for the great job he’s done!
After all that, how could the day get any better? It does. The phone rings. It’s an out-of-state call. And not just one -state away. How bout six states away, and they are calling about vehicle graphics for 30 trucks! No problemo, we’ve done many out-of-state installations.
How did they find us? Number one answer…..The Internet! Organically. Inbound marketing strikes again! We don’t use paid clicks. Tried. Didn’t get the results. Organic is where it’s at for us!
My Afternoon
After checking in on the current design and production jobs, I grab a quick lunch. My afternoon has one appointment scheduled, and some followup phone calls.
The appointment is for a vehicle wrap design consultation (another out-of-state customer). Since you already know the answer, I’m not going to say how he found us. The other reason I mention again the nature of their being out-of-state is that I believe inbound marketing allows you to go beyond your local marketplace. Sure we can strategize of about taking market share locally, but if you really work hard on your most important keywords, there is no boundary to where you can do business.
At this point of my story, instead of me droning on about each little subsequent inbound victory that was enjoyed this day, I’ll just give you the cliff notes version. I think you’ll get the idea of where I’m going with this.
- Received an email contact form quote for an out-of-state lobby sign – Internet
- Received an email contact form quote for an out-of-state lighted sign – Internet
- Took a phone call for a local business that is relocating, and will need a monument sign, an awning, and some way-finding signage – Internet
- Took a phone call for a local company in need of a lobby sign – Internet
- Lastly, during the course of the day six more people became a lead by converting on one of our offers.
This was certainly a day not to be forgotten in the three plus years that Sunrise Signs has been in business.
So Who Cares?
Now, you might be reading all this and not be impressed at all. Perhaps a normal day for you is getting fifty or a hundred leads. The thing is, is your business growing? If that fifty or one hundred leads enough to support your business and see awesome growth?
What I’m laying out for you here is that for my business, before jumping in head first with inbound marketing, I was happy to get just one or two leads a day. Compare and contrast that to what your best days look like. Are they growing the way you’d like them to be, or are they stagnant, possibly even declining?
What are YOUR Next Steps?
If you aren’t seeing the website lead generation results that you’d like to see, here are a few pointers to get you moving in the right direction:
1. Take a hard look at your website metrics. Is your website seeing consistent traffic gains, and if so, what is your visitor to lead conversion rate? What is your lead to customer conversion rate? More often than not, most people don’t know these numbers. If you really want to get serious about website lead generation, start here.
2. Stop making excuses for not business blogging. It’s all about your mindset. When my small business wasn’t growing, and my back was up against the wall, I make the decision to stop fooling myself that I was working hard. I decided it was more important to turn off the TV if I really wanted to grow my business. If you’re already business blogging and not getting the results you desire, are you blogging consistently?
3. Develop compelling calls-to-action and landing pages other than your contact form and email subscription. Test those CTA buttons and landing pages to maximize your conversion results.
4. Take a good hard look at your email marketing efforts. Email is not dead is any way, shape, or form.
Those are enough action steps to get you started, and if done properly, will turbocharge your website lead gen efforts! The day I enjoyed today was awesome and made me feel great! But I’ll tell ya this, I look forward to the possibilities of tomorrow and every day thereafter.
Batter Up!
Are you getting the results you desire from your web marketing efforts? If so, what here rings true for you? If not, what is holding you back? I would love to hear your stories!
If you felt that this story was of value to you, I would always appreciate some social sharing using the links below. Thanks for coming by. 
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Sounds you like have a great way to organize your days Adam
As someone who started to work online and moved all my offline to online business I can only say I am a BIG fan of inbound marketing.
Right now email marketing is my next big challenge. Thanks for pulling back the curtain on how the pros do it
Have an awesome week Adam.
John Falchetto recently posted..How I use Google Analytics Real Time
HA, glad to see that perception is reality regarding my organization John! I always at least start the day organized
Glad you were able to take something away from the post. I think that email marketing is becoming a lost art these days. There is a vast amount of opportunity to stay engaged with your prospects, even segment them to send highly optimized messages.
I really like what you’re doing over at your site so I’ll be looking forward to seeing where email takes you next!
Thanks for posting John! -Adam
Adam Sokoloff recently posted..20 Super Awesome Ways to Reuse, Recycle, Renew, and Repurpose your Blog Content!
Ah, a cereal mixer- you must be an Eagles fan. Actually I mix them as well so no reason for me to give you a hard time.
Anyhoo, the net provides so many different opportunities for businesses to engage with prospects and current customers that I am always surprised to learn of those who aren’t taking advantage of it.
Believe me, as an Eagles fan right now, you have EVERY right to give me a hard time Jack. Looks like you guys just pulled off a nice trade. Will be interesting to see what happens in Raiderville now. -Adam
Adam Sokoloff recently posted..20 Super Awesome Ways to Reuse, Recycle, Renew, and Repurpose your Blog Content!
Hi Adam
I really enjoyed this one. I could feel your energy as I wrote it. Your excitement for inbound marketing reflects that of my buddy Marcus Sheridan. Not comparing the two of you, but when he speaks of inbound marketing, he gets ALL excited!
I find the power of the internet to be amazing. And we’re just getting started which the most exciting part. Things are advancing so quickly and world and becoming more and more educated on this platform. Who knows what’s to come next.
Great stuff Adam. Hope your week has started off well!
Hey JK, thanks for posting. Looks like my enthusiasm was seeping through the keyboard on this one. Thanks for noticing! I was completely pumped up after that day. Yea, Marcus is a pretty excitable guy, he is awesome!
Things are advancing at an incredible rate right now. The opportunity is there, but you really need to stay ahead of, or at least on the curve!
The week has started off well, hope the same for you!
-Adam
Adam Sokoloff recently posted..20 Super Awesome Ways to Reuse, Recycle, Renew, and Repurpose your Blog Content!
Loved this post bud. Personal imbedded with awesome lessons.
Keep crushin it boss.
Marcus
Marcus Sheridan-The Sales Lion recently posted..Please Retweet, Share, and Snail Mail this Post to Everyone on Earth You Know
Hey Dude, thanks for coming by. I think what excites me most about inbound and content marketing (besides the making the phone ring part), is the creative side. The ability to take three pictures and a short video, and from that, brainstorm to come up with five or six pieces of content magnets that are used in different ways, to attract different customer personas.
That stuff gets me pumped up! Thanks man. -Adam
Adam Sokoloff recently posted..20 Super Awesome Ways to Reuse, Recycle, Renew, and Repurpose your Blog Content!
Hi Adam,
Don’t be too modest telling people about your success with inbound marketing. Your story is inspiring because any Tom, Dick and Harry can do it as long as they put in their efforts in the right way and consistently.
I just completed reading Marcus’ new ebook on inbound marketing. All 236 pages of it. Really some great staff. From now on, it is really about consumers finding us not the other way round.
As for all the 4 tips you suggested here in this post, I am already onto 2-4. But I am not experiencing success with increase traffic at the moment. My site is still young and I believe that it will be successful one day. I am actively looking to get someone to help me with site optimization because I know the technical stuff could be better enhance on my site.
If you can, could you suggest the three most important thing to do to SEO my site and post? Are there things to install? Things to submit? Articles to send? Etc. I am looking for technical pointers here to move me along.
BTW, I want to apologise for not using the chat service that you suggested so far.
Thanks for reading.
Jimmy recently posted..Should a Personal Development Program be Taught in Schools?
Hey Jimmy, thanks for swinging by to check out the post. I always so that if I can do it, anyone can. After all, why not let your passion work for you???
Marcus really put his heart into those posts so I’m sure you will find much to take away!
For SEO, I would suggest focusing on using good keywords in page titles, URL’s, and meta descriptions. I like using all-in-one-SEO pack for WordPress sites.
Hope that helps! -Adam
Adam Sokoloff recently posted..20 Super Awesome Ways to Reuse, Recycle, Renew, and Repurpose your Blog Content!
“Inbound marketers are patient”. That was a general characteristic of inbound marketers I should say. Thou not all of them are patient, and not all of them are smart. But when they really are, it brings lots of success. You must be clever and analytical thinker if you want to be an inbound marketer.
Mika Castro recently posted..יועצת שינה
Chef of Cereal Cuisine is not TMI buddy, but just gave me a vision of what our cereal cupboard looked like when I was growing up! I’m sure many of us can relate to the turning off the tv and growing. The 1 big thing I took away was what consistency can produce over time.
It’s always nice to have work being done or cash made while you’re sleeping. Quincy Jones calls it horizontal money.
Congrats Adam! As we all know in this internet thing. No one is an overnight success. Some just make it look that way
Keep up the good work buddy!
Hi Adam,
That’s what I’m looking for when I’m finally starting my own business in a few months. It will be all about inbound marketing. It seems that the day that you’re describing is the perfect day for an entrepreneur, and just see customers entering your door because of something they read on the internet
You’re doing an awesome job. Keep sharing. I need all the help I can get when I start my first business
Jens P. Berget recently posted..How to Name a Business When You Have Absolutely No Ideas Left