I sat down with Jason Kallio the other day to talk about his online marketing. We've known each other for a long time and have mutual respect for each other. We had a frank conversation about "Why someone might not sign up for HubSpot."

I mentioned that many people seem to want to "figure internet marketing out" on their own. Nothing that HubSpot enables is revolutionary. Business Blogging, Keyword Research & Tracking, Content Management, Lead Capture, Marketing Analytics. HubSpot didn't invent any of these things. They just made it possible for small business owners to do it through 2 incremental innovations:

1. They've put it all together in an integrated fashion. Customers can be doing all of these things in < 1 week. Most web development companies take a month or more to pull this stuff together and it usually is nowhere as complete an internet marketing toolset.
   
2. Training is included. Most web design and development firms cannot afford to train their clients how to do internet marketing. Success with internet marketing is related to time invested by the company's marketing and sales teams (In a very small business, the business owner plays both roles.). You can more effectively do SEO, blogging, social media marketing in-house than you can by outsourcing. Most web development and internet marketing firms, however, want you to pay them $200/hr to do it for you. This stuff isn't rocket science. With a few hours of training, most of our clients are generating leads pretty quickly.
   

Back to my conversation with Jason. Jason said to me, I'd never think of trying to do this myself. For me, it's "all about speed of execution".

And he's right. Russ Swallow, the MA dental insurance opponent, signed up less than 2 weeks ago. I spoke to him this morning on my commute. He's already published 3 blog posts, search engine optimized his pages and is half way down the HubSpot checklist. He still has plenty more to do, but he's well on his way.

Two months in... Dave Lima, the expert MA bankruptcy lawyer, is producing blog posts at two/week, hosting guest bloggers, networking effectively online, and most importantly, is generating leads and new business.

Then, there's Darcy Cook who's five months in. She's building her business online. She recently spoke on a radio show about her experience with online marketing and how she's closed more deals in her first few months than she generated leads in the whole year prior to using HubSpot.

How long has it taken you to implement 'your own' internet marketing strategy? What's that costing you?

Noel, the telecom expense management guru, says it best in a comment on the HubSpot blog post I wrote about planning your internet marketing strategy:

John is right on one account when he says "learn how to market your business on the web yourself". I would add, and do it using a proven methodology and experts, then add the hard work. While John is out searching the web trying to find the short cuts and getting "free" info I've already designed my site, ranked my keywords, gotten leads, made sales and taken my $250 investment and made thousands.

The only thing I'd add to that is that "Speed of Execution" doesn't stop after launch. Speed of Continuous Improvement is actually more important. Most companies do not have the the right systems in place to measure what's working, nor do they execute their internet marketing strategy in the right order.