I know why you’re here. You’re here because we used the magic words: online lead generation.

It seems everyone wants to know how to generate leads online, and they’re all searching for the answer like it’s some big secret.

There was a time when small businesses never had websites. The internet was a place for online-only businesses or major corporations. It was too expensive, too technical and far too much work to create a website for the mom and pop donut shop down the street or your local sporting goods store. But the world has changed quite a bit over the last few years. As the internet has become more and more a part of our daily lives, virtually any business can set up a website these days. There are also now a host of companies that are helping companies create websites, no matter how big, small or weird they may be.

Inbound marketing is currently the most effective marketing strategy. It’s dynamic, it saves you money, and it definitely works. However, it does tend to have a lot of moving parts, and it’s easy to become confused while running an inbound campaign (especially if it’s your first). With that in mind, we wanted to come up with a mini-checklist of sorts that can help you keep all those moving parts in check. If you ever find yourself lost or overwhelmed with a campaign, just use this blog article as a reference guide to get you back on track.

If a blog is published online and nobody finds it, does it make a sound? That’s a silly rip-off of a classic unanswerable question, but it brings up an issue worth considering: if you write great content for your inbound marketing strategy, how useful is it if nobody reads it?

It’s a question as old as time: how many of my leads should I be converting? The sales business is a hard slog, and salespeople need to develop a very thick skin. Few people are ever going to be rejected as much as the average salesperson is. It’s simply the nature of the beast. Potential customers are hesitant to trust sales pitches, and they are wary of products that sound too good to be true.

Inbound marketing is an exciting marketing strategy, which is cost effective and eminently adaptable. But it also has a lot of moving parts. Because of this, it can be easy to forget things from time to time. We’ve learned this the hard way here at Leap Clixx, and we don’t want you to have to do the same. So, let's look at what's important for an inbound marketing campaign:

4 Things to Remember When Running an Inbound Marketing Campaign 

Inbound marketing has a very specific formula: produce good content and it will attract leads (including more qualified leads). It’s a tried and true recipe for success that has worked for hundreds of businesses in many different fields.

In the business world, leads can be everything. They can be the difference between a bad month, a good month or a great month. You need leads to make sales, and you need sales to make money. And because of the nature of lead conversion, you’re going to need plenty of leads in order to have success. Most companies have a lead conversion rate that hovers around 2.35 percent – anything above 5 percent is considered exemplary. Think about that for a second: what other competition or field considers a 90+ percent failure rate to be a resounding success?

In order to fully understand how a lead becomes “sales ready,” it’s important to familiarize yourself with the concept of the buyer’s journey. HubSpot basically wrote the book (or should we say, the eBook?) on the buyer’s journey, and explains it thusly; every potential customer is in one of three stages of the journey: Awareness, Consideration and Decision. Each stage brings unique challenges, and there is a different marketing strategy for each stage of the journey. Let’s briefly break down how the three stages differ:

Let’s begin with a simple question: would you start a new business without a physical address? Aside from the fact it’s not legal, the question itself is preposterous. What sort of business doesn’t have a mailing address? Similarly, you wouldn’t start a business without a dedicated business phone line; after all, how are people going to contact you?