I often get asked by executives who are seeking to grow their business, “Should I be deploying inbound or outbound marketing tactics?’ My answer almost every time is, “Yes.”

In 2015 (yes, three years ago!), I wrote a blog post titled, “3 Things Every Media Company Needs to Do in 2015,” and it was pretty popular. I consider myself uniquely qualified to write about this topic because I spent the first half of my career selling advertising at a media company and the second half (so far) consulting media companies on their B2B marketing, lead generation, and sales enablement needs.  

I’ve recently learned that nothing makes a room fall silent more quickly than asking a group of sales managers, “Who here is in charge of lead generation?” Typically, the person in charge of lead generation is the same person who is in charge of setting appointments, finding needs, coming up with solutions, building proposals, making presentations, getting the contracts signed, ensuring that the contracts are fulfilled, and picking up the checks: the salesperson. 

I recently had a client of mine do a complete overhaul of their website. New templates, new copy, new CTA buttons, new sitemap—a complete redesign. As anyone who has been through one of these major re-designs knows, it takes a lot of prepping, planning and time to execute a brand new website. When it was all over the client said to me, “I feel like I just gave birth.” She was so proud of all of the months of hard work and the constant emails and edits and approvals that she was gleaming as if looking at a new baby. Now, anyone who has given actual birth would probably laugh in her face (maybe even throw a punch), but I did see the correlation between putting all of your energy into something and getting a really great result.

And as many mothers in the past have said after giving birth, “I’m never doing that again!”… you would be surprised as to how many go on to have a second, third, fourth, and maybe even a fifth child. The same thing will happen with your website—you are most likely going to redesign that website many more times over the years.

This brings me to my own personal experience, as I have done many website redesigns between clients and the companies I have worked for. She was right! Website redesigns are exhausting and take a lot of energy to complete, but they are well worth it. I also realized, just like raising a child and teaching them to grow, we also need to help our websites grow!

Here are 5 ways to keep your website growing and working for your business: 

1. Give each page of your website the attention it deserves.

When we picture lead generation working the way we think it should, most of us envision the salesperson being handed a lead that is fully qualified and only a small step from closing. We want the process to be predictable and the performance to be near perfect.

If only the real world were so simple and straightforward. You remember the real world—where humans act human and analysis turns murky.

Below are seven ways you can know if your blog is generating a return on your investment, and therefore be able to answer the question, “Is the company blog working?”

1. The Prospect Engages, Seemingly Out of the Blue

This is when a former prospect or client that had gone quiet for a few months re-engages as a result of a blog post or a piece of premium content. Top salespeople understand that those messy humans who don’t take the straight and narrow path to your door shouldn’t be written off. Keep your eye on them as they reconvert and decide when it's time to call.

You built your website so that prospects would find you, get convinced they need your products and/or services, and call for a consultation, sign up for your marketing, or make a purchase, right? The goal of your website is to generate leads. What if you could optimize your site so that it was more effective at cranking out leads for you? That’s what conversion rate optimization (CRO) is all about.

It seems that just about every sales organization has implemented a CRM software to help their sales team become more productive and more efficient. But according to Merkle Group, Inc, 63% of CRM implementations fail. They don’t fail because it’s bad software. No, it’s usually because the sales team simply doesn’t use the software.

Salespeople can be a finicky bunch—especially experienced, successful ones. They’ve spent years refining their sales approach, and they don’t want to rock the boat. The common refrain that can be heard from conference rooms across the country is, "If it ain’t broke, why fix it?" Maybe their process "ain’t broke," but it’s rare to find a sales process that can’t be improved or enhanced in some way. Often that’s what a CRM offers—the ability to take your sales process to the next level. The challenge then becomes getting the sales team to actually use the CRM on a consistent basis. Here are a few ideas.

People believe all kinds of crazy things. And just because people believe something, doesn’t mean it's true. SEO has more than its share of untrue beliefs, and these myths keep good sites from ranking well because the owners of the sites don’t know better.

It’s no secret that attracting prospects, generating sales leads, and building a robust sales pipeline are essential in the success of any business. What seems to be a secret to many, though, is how these objectives can be accomplished. Many organizations continue to struggle to execute lead generation strategies that produce consistent results. There is really no magic bullet to lead generation. But there are some fundamentals that are often ignored that will get consistent results when applied as a cohesive strategy.

Good journalism can teach us a thing or two about creating blog posts. Journalists and inbound marketers who are dedicated to their craft have something in common: they commit to doing the things that engage their readers. 

Here are five lessons from journalism that companies can apply to their blog writing to increase engagement—and get better results.