How Much Time Does Inbound Marketing Require?

While business leaders are always keeping their eye on P/L and ROI, there’s an even more precious resource that they focus on: TIME. 

And in light of this, it’s not surprising that one of the most frequent questions we’re asked is: “how much time does Inbound Marketing require?” This is an extremely important question, and there are essentially three answers.

The first answer is “it depends”. Now, trust us: we’d like nothing better than to provide a specific, definitive number applies to every Inbound Marketing campaign. It would make our lives easier. But the fact is that each business and each campaign is unique. Some require a larger time investment, some less. What’s more, within campaigns there are multiple elements – again, some that require more time, and some less. The only honest answer we can give here “it depends”.

However, we can certainly share some guidance and insight on the one variable that will, more than anything else, determine how much time you will spend on Inbound Marketing. This variable is whether you choose to manage things in-house, or if you partner with an Inbound Marketing company.

If You Manage Inbound Marketing In-House

If you choose to manage your Inbound Marketing program in-house, and provided that you have the skilled resources and right technology to do so, then here are some of the activities and tasks that you will need to effectively complete on an ongoing basis: 

• Competitive marketplace scan
• Buyer persona development for all of your target customer groups
• In-depth keyword research
• Blog content strategic development and planning
• Blog content writing (the best practice is one blog each business day)
• Blog content publishing (includes graphic selection, layout, meta tagging, etc.)
• Asset strategic planning (e.g. ebooks, reports, white papers, Infographics, etc.)
• Asset selection and research
• Asset development and creation
• Asset graphic design and production (includes landing pages)
• Asset deployment (i.e. where the asset should be positioned in the sales cycle, what the contact form should contain, etc.).
• Social media management 
• Social media content identification, development and distribution
• Newsletter and email marketing development and deployment
• Paid search campaign development, launch and management (if applicable)
• Web optimization
• Daily tracking of all progress (both campaigns in development and those deployed)
• Weekly, monthly, quarterly and semi-annual strategic reviews
• Project management of all resources to ensure timely, efficient completion and no schedule delays or bottlenecks

Frankly, this isn’t even an exhaustive list. If we were to roll out every task that goes into a single Inbound Marketing campaign – let alone multiple campaigns running concurrently -- you’d be here for the next hour or two (and while we’d love for you to stick around, we know that your time is valuable and limited!).

Overall, you should expect to allocate about 75-100 hours per week on your Inbound Marketing campaigns. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you, personally, need to spend 75-100 hours per week. It just means that there will likely be about 75-100 hours (or possibly more) of Inbound Marketing work per week that you’ll need to allocate to your in-house team. 

So your copywriter may spend 30 hours of time, your project manager may spend 15 hours of time, your graphic designer may spend 20 hours of time, your keyword guru may spend 10 hours of time…and so on. Once the dust settles, 75-100 hours a week is pretty standard (though as mentioned, it can be higher).  

If You Work with an Inbound Marketing Company

If you work with an Inbound Marketing company, and provided that they’re experienced, credible and proven, then you will PROFOUNDLY lower your time investment to about 2-3 hours per week (it may be a bit higher initially due to discovery meetings and strategic development). 

What’s more, your time will be spent on high-level executive tasks, such as reviewing results, discussing opportunities, and defining vision. And on top of this, your Inbound Marketing company will almost certainly be able to do a much better job than your in-house team, and at a much lower rate.

This isn’t a criticism of your team. Rather, it’s simply because developing and running Inbound Marketing campaigns isn’t what they specialize in. However, an established Inbound Marketing company has in-house resources that live, breathe, eat and even sleep Inbound Marketing. It’s ALL that they do – and they do it extremely well. They’re not just in the Major Leagues, but they’re All-Stars – and that makes a difference to your time investment AND your financial investment. 

Learn More

To learn more about making the most of your limited time – and making every Inbound Marketing dollar you invest go much further than you can imagine – contact us today.

Discover why businesses across the country are choosing us to do their Inbound Marketing heavy lifting, while they focus on running their organization, and enjoying ROI.