Why Inbound Marketing? Here's What Marco's VP of Marketing Thinks

On the fence about inbound marketing? It can be helpful to hear from someone who was in your same shoes - someone who was facing the same decision and had the same doubts, concerns and questions. 

As early adopters, this is a risk we take. We don't have a foolproof plan that's going to increase your sales X%.

In fact, if you ask most of our clients, you'll likely get the similar answers. Yes, inbound marketing required a leap of faith...

We're happy to share a little sitdown session with one of our clients, Barry Opatz, the Vice President of Marketing at Marco, where we discussed the questions and doubts he had just over two years ago - and what made Marco decide to jump into the deep end of the inbound marketing pool.  

Technology ... That Must Change a Lot

When Barry began his career at Marco in 1987, he began in advertising and was the retail floor manager of office supplies, including pens, pencils, and paper, and technology like typewriters, calculators, and copiers/printers. Technology is the fastest-growing and evolving industry. As its components changed over time, so did Marco's unique needs for marketing and advertising. The early stuff included billboard, radio, and direct mail. The new millennium brought their first website.

Barry said, "On our third website redesign, we were growing significantly beyond our Minnesota footprint and the Internet had taken over as the research vehicle of choice for customers. Taking that into consideration, we realized our website was acting like a brochure. It was static without any engagement. We knew we needed to be more effective with SEO ... which we had tried a few times. It was just too easy to not stay consistent with it. Trends change so quickly ... it was hard to stay on top of the them. We were ready for a new solution."

The New solution

When we began our discussion around inbound, Marco was in their second year of social media undertaking, and while it was doing okay as a stand-alone initiative, it wasn't flowing with the rest of their online efforts. They had also established a leadership blog series from Jeff Gau, the CEO, and a technology blog from CTO, Steve Knutson. Those pieces of attraction content were already a form of inbound marketing - a great avenue for creating thought leadership! However, their efforts seemed disjointed, they weren't coming together to close the loop. There had to be something else.

"I hadn't heard the term 'inbound marketing' before, but we had talked about lead generation. We even tried a number of the activities based around traditional things like direct mail for that effort. None of them were successful in terms of the investment or the quality of leads - according to our sales reps," said Barry.

A Leap of Faith

From Marco's perspective they knew they needed ... something, but was inbound marketing it?

As Barry explains, "We felt it was a necessary direction our website had to go. Plus, there was a commitment to a sales goal. That was refreshing."

That's why we became an inbound marketing agency, because that goal, that measurement and benchmark, could prove our work works. We don't enter a partnership with any client without a goal, and Marco was no exception.

So was inbound marketing a leap of faith for Marco?

"Yes, it was a leap of faith, because there was no way to know. We didn't know anyone in our industry who had been successful with it, yet there are companies built around this effort. With the bright young talent on board we felt it was a collaborative effort, and we knew it would take time. [Along with the goal] It felt realistic and more believable with the established timeline," Barry said.

Eyes on the Horizon

It's been more than two years since Marco and Leighton Interactive began dating and to this Barry confesses, "We continue to be amazed at the leads that come in. This shit works. We've proved it works for us and in our industry. We are continuing to get quality leads that turn into revenue; when we renewed our contract at the end of that first year (in Fall 2014) we expanded into other areas of our business. As we grow nationally with a number of solutions, this [inbound marketing] was the first marketing activity we initiated in those markets ... and we already have leads coming in."

A big question people have regarding inbound marketing is what happens to what you're already doing, like the traditional aspects of marketing and advertising. Barry adds, "Nothing goes away. You just add to it. We don't do any marketing activity without considering inbound and social. Almost everything we do has this component.

Those 'AHA' Moments

New things = learning curve. That was in place for Marco as they adopted inbound as their marketing methodology. For them, inbound is all about content, yet there were other nuances that took time to adjust to, and accept.

"Timely follow-up for the leads. Their level of activity signals their interest - they need to be followed up with." Barry said. (And, that closed loop is also very important to Leighton Interactive, too ... it relates to that whole goal thing).

Barry continued, "We're surprised that the simplest topics are what our viewers find valuable. As an organization, you need help, like an outside point of view, to develop that understanding of what your customers want (rather than what you want them to want). Keyword research defines what you name your solutions and services; we ended up changing all of our website navigation phrases based on research inbound produced. You have to learn to think from your customer's side of things. And, you can't have enough CTA's (calls to action) on your site!"

--

We get so ... geeked out by stories like that of Marco's. We're so honored to help tell their stories, promote their business, and help make their lives easier. They do technology; we do inbound. Together, we do awesome. If you want more of Marco's specific story, check out their case study and the testimonial video Barry did for us:

If you love this story, there are plenty more where it came from. We'll be happy to share ... just let us know when you're ready.