I work with companies and individuals to understand their market and where their product and services fit. Often I find myself doing a lot of research into market presence and positioning. This is how I discovered the power of Inbound Marketing Strategies - those companies that use these strategies always have higher traffic ranks and popularity scores - surprisingly when I would point this out to the companies and individuals I work for, I have always been met with a lot of push back. This is my take on why that happens. Most small businesses have never contemplated change management. I have applied what I know about why change is difficult for the case of adopting Inbound Marketing Strategies. You can say the same thing happens with more straight forward issues, such as moving to a relational database from Excel spreadsheets. When doing data collection or tracking with more than one person, the master spreadsheet gets permanently screwed up with erroneous errors or missed changes. A relational database can permanently solve the problem. I always encounter resistance on this as well. Strange but true, I see it all the time.

1. You Have Got to be Crazy.
How Small Businesses Successfully Adopt
Inbound Marketing Strategies

2. The Concept of Inbound Marketing
Causes Schizophrenia
If you are struggling with adopting and changing to Inbound
Marketing Strategies it is because you are schizophrenic. While
your rational side wants: a lower cost per lead, a heightened sense
of community, an ability to inspire, and offers of valued products
and services to loyal followers, your emotional side thinks
differently. It’s the elephant in the room looking for the quick
payoff – “Buy the TV ad… it’s easy. We’ll talk about features and
how great we are. We’ve done it before.”
The Problem is the TV ad doesn’t work as well as it used to – Nor
does traditional outbound messaging on features – You do what
millions of us do each morning… you hit the snooze alarm even
though the rational side of your brain knows the right thing to do is
to get up at 6:00 AM. Then we panic to get out the door in time.
Rorschach
inkblot
test

3. Your Will Power has been Sapped
Self control and will power are not inexhaustible. Ever been on a diet?
And [a diet] is usually the approach taken by small business leaders
when they attempt to adopt Inbound Marketing Strategies. They
decide to alter their consumption patterns but keep the temptation of
the quick emotional payoff of TV and Radio and Print (whatever their
“normal” is) within arm’s reach. Let’s say they take a different
approach – Inbound Marketing as a diet pill. We look at diet pills as a
panacea. Of course the rational side of our brain would say “read the
instructions,” which of course the elephant in the room (our emotional
side) replies, “if the pill is any good then just taking it should be
enough.” We don’t combine the pill with diet and exercise. We hit the
snooze alarm again. We consume a piece of Inbound Marketing - we
try a thing or two (start a Twitter account – read SEO for Dummies)
and then it is right back to the buffet of Radio, TV, and print or
whatever your “normal” is. Plus, the local Yellow Pages has a special
going on!!! Never mind you haven’t picked up a Yellow Pages in years
other than to recycle it. Search engines are just too easy to access
nowadays – even from a phone, how ironic is that?

4. You are Unsupervised
As they say, “It is lonely at the top.” You are unsupervised. Now you
may have a board or a group of advisors but their job is not to
supervise you, in fact they might be the ones advising you to try a diet
of Inbound Marketing (maybe they think you won’t hit the snooze
alarm). Inevitably you do. Disappointment is shared all the way
around. How now will you get the cost per lead to drop? This change
you are trying to create is hard because you are wearing yourself out.
Your advisors may think you are lazy (maybe even incompetent) while
in fact you are exhausted since you are exercising tremendous effort to
turn things around – after all you are not crazy, right? You are working
feverishly to get the things that worked in the past to cost less or
function more efficiently. What if I change the timeslots around? What
if I change radio stations? What if I can negotiate a better rate? Maybe
I could improve the TV commercial? What if I used someone with an
Australian accent for the voice over work? What if? What if? And if you
become truly exhausted, then in some months it all begins to blur – it
is the same thing that happens when you drive down a long open
stretch of highway… you can’t remember the last few miles you
traveled. It’s far easier to say you are trying, offer some evidence and
hope everyone is placated. Placating is the same thing as a snooze
alarm – it buys you some time, but you just end up more panicked and
just as exhausted.
Change is hard because people wear themselves
out trying to swim to the other side.

5. The Problem: You don’t Think
you are “Crazy!”
We view the world through our own rose colored lenses – we think
everyone sees what we see. What we don’t realize is how fast the
world around us is changing. We change through adoption and the
rate at which we adopt is variable. You may be a “late majority”
adopter (you have about a thirty percent chance). Worse you may be a
“resister” (17% chance). If you are a resister type then go ahead and
jump off the bridge because the rest of us are crazy… just not you…
and you won’t be able to stand being around these crazy people
always tethered to their cell phones, using Skype, or Twitter, or Quora.
And why don’t people ever send hand written notes via the postal
service anymore? The rest of us will reach an epiphany – we will
realize that we are CRAZY for not adopting Inbound Marketing
strategies, because we’ll see our competitors growing their businesses,
being talked about, receiving positive press, and increasing their traffic
rates all done with Inbound Marketing strategies. You will realize that
you could be doing the same things and If you don’t you would think
yourself CRAZY! Everyone before you has reached this point – If you
were Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan at Hubspot you would have
realized you were crazy early on and adopted Inbound Marketing
before anyone else – that is because Halligan and Shah are “innovator”
types (8% of us). We would have thought them crazy were it not for
“leaders” (17% of us) like David Meerman Scott (innovative in his own
right) who evangelized and provided trusted advice and opinions
which led to the “early majority” adopters (29% of us) adopting
Inbound Marketing strategies. This is about where we are today. The
early majority is still in its adoption phase – leaving a lot more that half
of us to yet realize we are CRAZY for not adopting Inbound Marketing
strategies… and a lot of exhausted small business owners with blurred
memories of long open highway stretches.

6. Inbound Marketing:
Not an Analytical Choice
The emotional side of your brain trumps reason every single time. If
you think you are going to overcome emotion and adopt Inbound
Marketing based on marketing facts, figures, and presentations from
the internet - you are just dead wrong (this presentation included).
Instead you will have lots of meetings about Inbound Marketing. You
will talk about Inbound Marketing ROI and whether the diet pills are
working. Mostly the meetings will end with scheduling the next
meeting. The meetings will take place further and further apart since
you can never come to a clear conclusion, and you would rather see
the issue just go away. People go on diets because they see a skinny
person. People move to Inbound Marketing strategies because they
realize they are CRAZY not too. Thinking you’re crazy is a lot different
than wishing you were skinny because it is not crazy to want to be
skinny. It is crazy not to adopt Inbound Marketing strategies when a
competitor is successfully doing it – unless you are in the habit of
giving your business or advantages away. Being crazy is a great
motivator. Say it with me, “This is crazy… I am crazy. And I have got to
make sure this changes.” That is good. You just became the elephant.
You can now emotionally champion the Inbound Marketing strategies
you will seek out and adopt, thus avoiding the schizophrenia. You are
going to feel that this is the right thing to do – you will have pushed
this from your Frontal Lobes down into your Limbic “Old” Brain – you
will now operate at the gut level of feeling, the most powerful of all
feelings right next to love. You will incorporate these feelings into your
purpose, cause and beliefs about your business. You will invite people
to listen to how you accomplish your beliefs, and you will share with
them the results of your efforts.
Good Luck! Hope to see you at the funny farm.

7. Would You Like More
Crazy Thoughts and Opinions?
Michael Years
Market Development Consulting
LēD GĕN 3.0
561-819-8179
http://ledgen30.com
mikeyears@ledgen30.com
Twitter: @mikeyears