In Internet Marketing, Willingness to Learn and Commitment Are More Important Than Software

I talk to a lot of business owners and in-house marketers every week. When someone is interested in our marketing software , I first ask them a bunch of questions about their goals, constraints, abilities and most importantly: their commitment. Some of them include:

• Why are you interested in inbound marketing? 
• How many leads and new clients do you need to hit your growth goals next month, next year?
• How are you doing now against the goals you set last year?
• How are you planning to hit your goals next year?
  
• Why is this important to you?
  
• What happens if you don't hit these goals?
• How much time do you have to dedicate to this?
  
• Do you like to write? Are you good at writing?
  
• Do you like to build relationships with new people? 
• Are you decent at interpreting graphs and charts?
• Do you pick up new software fairly easily?
  
• Are you interested in learning some new skills?
  

I try to ask all of these questions before we talk about internet marketing. Of course, we talk specifics about blogging, SEO, keyword research, landing pages, lead capture best practices, etc.

But, what's more important is whether they're committed to doing all the work. Spending the time . Learning new internet marketing skills . 

The software they use certainly matters. I'd get fired if I said otherwise. But, it's far less important than their committment level. 

If you're considering inbound lead generation as a way to grow your business (and you should be), you should first answer the questions above. Then, you should talk to experts about how you're going to pull it off and what data, software and skills you need. 

If you've made the committment to internet mareketing and you're willing to share some of your answers to the questions above, it would certainly help people who haven't made the full committment yet. Please share. 

( Photo by Eschipul .)

Webinar: Rethinking Marketing

Want to learn more about how you can use inbound marketing to grow your business? Download the free webinar to learn how to turn your website into an internet marketing machine.