Even though there's a rapidly growing list of marketing automation platforms available for businesses to streamline and automate their marketing processes, there is a sizable contingent of business owners who prefer to assemble and integrate their own solutions. Why would a business take the "build a solution" approach to one of "buying an all-in-one solution"? Let's take a look at some of the key factors involved. 

Getting agreement from company leadership and marketing departments that blogging is essential to educating prospects and to driving site traffic is still a difficult sell. Even more difficult, once that sale is made, is getting fully committed buy-in from the top down to help infuse the value of blog content inside the company. 

One of the more challenging aspects of finding the right inbound marketing support is determining the right price for the services delivered. Whether those services are delivered by a fully-staffed agency or by a consultant, there is significant price variation in the marketplace. 

There's a healthy amount of debate on the merits of outsourcing company blog writing versus insourcing it. Insourcing is just another way of stating that you'll either utilize existing internal resources or develop new ones to handle the execution of blog writing.

There's a lot of confusion in the marketplace about which marketing automation tools are best suited to small and midsized businesses.  A big part of the confusion is attributable to the growing array of choices available. Another contributor is the lack of a proper evaluation framework with which to determine best fit.                                   

The subject of competition in inbound marketing has been popping up more frequently in recent discussions. As you'd expect, there are a wide range of viewpoints on this topic - from "there's so much competition it's getting harder to achieve success" to "we don't really have any competition". 

Getting inbound marketing to work for your business takes an ongoing commitment to executing its key elements consistently. What's often overlooked is the preparatory process before the initial commitment. To get the most out of your inbound marketing efforts in the fastest amount of time, you'll benefit from thinking through the following issues. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it should serve to provide the momentum to develop a solid plan.

Whenever I'm out and about and someone discovers what I do for a living, it's inevitable that the subject of blogging will come up (I'll bring it up if they don't!). If I were to distill the range of questions about blogging to a simple, recurring query - it would be: What's the deal with blogging?

When our two boys were in grade school, my wife and I decided we wanted them to learn how to ski. Our logic was based on the premise that early and frequent training would get them to a level of proficiency that allowed them to really enjoy the sport.

In executing inbound marketing campaigns, there's a process and flow to follow in order for them to be successful. For many business owners, it can be difficult to understand what elements should be in a campaign and how these elements should be linked together in the optimal sequence.