If you’re new to the concept of inbound marketing or if you’re looking for a down and dirty rundown of its elements, you’ve come to the right place. Whether you hire an agency or undergo the process on your own, here are the four main goals of inbound and the accompanied services that you can expect to find in a solid inbound marketing plan.
1: Generate Qualified Website Traffic
Content Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Sharing
The first goal of inbound marketing is to get consumers looking at your website. Most consumers nowadays research by typing a question into Google. You want to be one of the first pages they see on that search results page. You can achieve this by creating content (blog posts, videos, images, etc) that puts the consumer first. Give them a post that’s educational or a video that’s humorous but relevant.
When you write insightful content that answers your customers’ questions and uses awesome SEO, you set yourself up to attract more qualified website traffic. When you blog and then share those posts on your social media channels, you establish yourself as an expert, build awareness, and gain credibility for your brand online.
2: Convert Website Visitors into Leads
Call-to-Action (CTA) buttons, Landing Pages, Forms
Once you get that qualified traffic to your site and they see you as an expert in your field, what next? Part of being a successful inbound marketer is turning that qualified traffic into qualified leads. To do this, you need to use premium content pieces, calls-to-action, and landing pages.
Creating more in-depth premium content pieces and offers, such as ebooks, webinars, and free demos, helps you generate leads because in exchange for your content, you’ll ask visitors to fill out a form. This form, usually some type of landing page, will ask for valuable data that you will use to guide them down the sales funnel. Not only will the visitor be getting free content, but they will be letting you know they are interested in what you have to offer.
3: Turn Leads into Customers
Email Marketing, Sales Consulting
Now that you know this particular prospect is interested in your brand, you can’t just sit back and wait for them to call you. By utilizing the process of lead-nurturing, you can guide your new prospects buy american xanax down the path to purchase.
Since your lead just took advantage of your premium content, they might also be interested in a different ebook or webinar on a similar topic. To market to this prospect, set up an automated email campaign that sends a series of emails suggesting other, similar offers that keep them engaging with your content and your brand, but also moving them along the sales funnel.
Use the data collected from forms with the content the lead has been engaging with to have a tailor-made plan ready to go. By the time the prospect is at the end of the sales funnel and ready to talk about purchasing your services or product, you will know how to best accommodate their needs.
4: Measure, Analyze, Interpret & Refine
Marketing Automation Software, A/B Testing, Misc. Analytics Tools
If you’re going to put in the effort to create a killer inbound campaign, it’s important to make sure that what you’re doing is actually working. Marketing automation software, like Hubspot, provides you with an integrated platform to facilitate and analyze all of your inbound marketing efforts.
One easy way to gauge results is through the use of A/B testing. A/B testing allows you to examine what works best to drive customers through your content. You might show a call-to-action that says, “Get Your eBook Today!” to one set of prospects and another that says, “Download Now” to a different group. After looking at the data, you can determine which CTA got the most click-throughs and then use that as your default CTA.
Utilizing analytics helps to fine-tune your campaigns and offerings, allowing you to replicate successes in the future and dispose of what’s not working as quickly as possible.
Takeaways
To stay competitive in this changing marketing landscape, you must create campaigns that place your brand directly in front of your target audience. You need to be able to answer questions, address pain points, give expert advice, and entertain with fresh, original content.
Applying these core elements of inbound marketing methodology, you too can create a campaign that will attract more qualified visitors, generate more leads, and convert more leads into customers.
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