Inbound Marketing Summit 2010 - Takeaways for Small Businesses Part 3

If you haven't already, I highly recommend that you check out my previous two posts on IMS 2010 Takeaways for Small Businesses:

Part 1 - Social Media Works IF You Are Engaged In It
Part 2 - Social Media + Investment of Time = Financial Return

In this post I want to share my 3rd major takeaway for small businesses. This one wasn't really talked about at length, because the majority of the audience worked for large agencies or large brands, but it was mentioned and applies directly to Small Businesses like yours and ours.

Small Businesses Have a Huge Advantage with Inbound Marketing - Agility and Flexibility

Small Businesses have muscle that large brands do not when it comes to inbound marketing. Again, this wasn't the main focus of any of the sessions at IMS 2010 (#IMS2010) but it jumped out at me as an obvious takeaway. Some of the presenters did spend time discussing some of the hurdles that large enterprises have in implementing an inbound marketing strategy. Here are just some of the major challenges:

- Bureaucracy
- Legal department evaluation
- Engraining the whole inbound process throughout a large organization
- Reacting to comments/tweets/blog comments without approval

Your small business on the other hand can blog, tweet, check in, permission market and update your status on facebook without jumping through hoops. You can also get more personal with your fans/followers because you won't have as many. You can quickly create a team of employees that have a role in each area of inbound marketing, even if they are not marketers at all.

Inbound Marketing is truly one of the only areas in business where the smaller you are, the bigger your advantage. So, what are you waiting for? Get at it and start crafting your inbound marketing strategy. Once the strategy and measurement metrics are in place, the cost of inbound marketing is less than any other marketing venue. The potential for rewards and return is enormous.