In weeks to come, there’s a series of blogs that I’ll be dedicating to social entrepreneurs who are where I was years ago – on the frontlines of resistance.  When I started my consulting practice in 2011, I was gung-ho about making a difference in the world.  I had a book that I’d written later that year; I had a social enterprise venture that I wanted to start.  I saw clear-as-day about the problems I felt my organization could solve.

In Search Of the Best Social Entrerprise Marketing Method

Then came the time to sit with the organizations I wanted to consult and their board members, and their excuses, and their reluctance, and resignation, and their unspoken cynicism and digital ignorance – and you know how the rest goes.  After years of having some success, I still felt that the non-profit or social enterprise organizations that I wanted to help were not getting the message and power of digital marketing.  Even the small businesses that I consulted where still not getting how to make digital marketing, social media marketing work for them.

Finding the Marketing Method that was Right For Me…

And today, the confusion is still there as new technologies have emerged.  Should I be on Snapchat? Instagram? Facebook? Twitter?  What’s best for my business and ideal customer?  These questions and many more like them were the ones I was aiming to address years ago and had few resources to make a case so obvious for my clients and prospects that they’d run to me with paid invoices.  And then 2015 came.  I worked with MBA.com through the Graduate Management Admissions Council and discovered Hubspot’s Inbound approach to marketing.  For proprietary reasons that I can’t get into as to why this happened…all I can tell you is that Hubspot inspired dignity, hope and humanity to everything that I learned all those years as a digital marketer.  And after watching and learning through their academy, I took the plunge and became a certified Inbound Marketer through them.

Lessons Learned and Adopting Inbound Marketing as My Method

As I look back, I realized that I had two challenges.  One I had market myself better using an Inbound approach.  And I had to convince others that the Inbound approach was better.  I felt I was also one of the lucky ones that didn’t get burned out and frustrated to the point of giving up my focus and passion to inspire social enterprises and entrepreneurs while figuring this out; but I will admit that I had to change my approach and tone.  I had to speak the language of Inbound Marketing and it was EASIER.  Had I known then what I know now, I would have ran to Hubspot to learn about what they were doing and how to implement it into my marketing.  But as they say, hindsight’s 20/20.

Looking ahead though, I’ll say that if you’re a social entrepreneur or enterprise looking to have your voice clearly heard in today’s NOISY marketing – the Inbound approach might be worth considering.  I’ll get into the reasons why in the posts to come, but for now take the 3 min survey below and determine if the Inbound approach would be right for you.

The Inbound Marketing Model