Here are five tips to help your company embrace an Inbound Culture:

1. Redefine your strategy and goals

Inbound Culture could be a fundamental shift in the way you do business or operate internally. Introducing such sweeping change will be hard, but it’s not a reason not to do it at all.

The first step is to review the strategy that dictates your current activities. Do they reflect an Inbound attitude? Or are they still outwardly focused?

How about your goals? Do they align with want you want to achieve from your Inbound activities?

If not, perhaps it’s time to review each, and re-write them with your new company focus in mind.

2. Expect some resistance

Not everybody is a marketing expert, let alone an Inbound Marketing expert. These are relatively new concepts for people in the industry, so you can expect people in IT, sales and operations for example to be a little uncertain about a fundamental shift in organisational culture based on the principles of Inbound.

It’s hard trying to convince people to start blogging, or to see its long term value if they’ve never blogged before. But what if you were to let them contribute ideas, develop content or empower them to do benchmarking against other websites? What if they were a key part of developing the strategies and goals to help you on your inbound journey?

If you take this approach staff end up with something called ‘buy in’. Even the staunchest of employees are capable of developing an emotional attachment to a project if given the opportunity to contribute, and they will want it to succeed if they feel as though they’re an integral part.

And this is something that can continue long term. If it’s a website or blog you’ve delivered, keep everyone updated with the metrics. As the page views and click through statistics start to grow, watch everyone get on board to find new ways to boost numbers and outrank competitors.

3. Bring all departments on the journey

When it comes to adopting an Inbound Culture, we can’t be working in silos. We must open up lines of communication between all employees across all departments. But in typically structured companies it’s common to see a disconnect between the key teams and the employees responsible for delivering on the organisation’s goals and values.

It might be an opportune time to advocate for an organisational structure that encourages cross-departmental collaboration, or introduce internal working parties that can jointly deliver Inbound Marketing projects.

4. Encourage cultural change

Delivering a change towards inbound culture won’t be successful if you don’t live it and breathe it yourself. If you want to be the catalyst for change and introduce a cultural shift, you have to lead the way. All of your own work must reflect the principles of Inbound Culture. By introducing small changes before big ones and showing enthusiasm for a new outlook, you become a role model. After all, your colleagues, management and other department all need an example to follow.

If you want to be the catalyst for change, then you must start living the principles of Inbound Culture in all of your own work.

5. Don’t ignore the feedback

Taking other people’s ideas on board gives them a sense of ownership over a project or company culture - something that will be pivotal to the success of adopting Inbound Culture.

By adopting inbound, you’re giving all employees the permission to actively contribute towards your company’s future and the values it operates by. By allowing them to get involved and delivering on their feedback, they become directly invested in your success.