We understand that inbound marketing is difficult but here are some guidelines to help you plan out your strategy to get you on your way.
1. Plan. You need to develop the personas you are targeting your product or services for. Frrom there, you can assess your current needs, and set objectives and measurable goals in order to develop an effective content strategy. When you have a strategy, you can then define the responsibilities and distribute them among your staff to achieve your goals.
2. Create. Whether it is videos, blogs, webinars, podcasts, white papers, or ebooks, you need to develop interesting content for your audience. The content will attract visitors, convert them into leads and position you as a thought leader. You need to feed them information that they can’t really get elsewhere or that they would look to you for as their main source.
3. Distribute. You need to share content specifically designed to appeal to your ideal customer. Help get found through keywords for SEO. Promote your posts on social media and beyond throughout the web. Utilize email marketing to bring visitors back. These are great ways to share your content. You should also use a content calendar for strategic planning so that all of these outlets don’t get mixed up or overlooked.
4. Capture. You need to convert visitors to generate a list of qualified prospects. You can do so with premium content offers and compelling calls to action. Landing pages and contact forms are also straight-shots to your leads. When you give your audience the opportunity to give you their information and contact you, they will more likely do so and begin their process as your customer.
5. Analyze. Once you have captured some leads, you can’t just stop there. You need to review the data you have to determine what’s working and what’s not. This way, you won’t be having useless parts of your advertising that just take up space for the things that can convert more leads. Tools from sites like HubSpot and Google Analytics allows you to identify your top lead sources, show which topics and posts are read the most, and which specific offers are converting your readers into leads.
6. Cultivate. You can’t just have a potential lead or customer and expect them to not change their minds. You also want your customers to spread the word to people they know as well. This process makes it necessary to maintain lead nurturing and marketing automation in order to establish trust and credibility. This is necessary to make your brand stand apart from the rest. People don’t just trust anyone and if you can keep this, your customer base will stay with you and grow with their recommendations to others.