Inbound marketing is a variety of activities that brings interested prospects IN to your organization.
It earns the attention of potential customers by producing relevant content, developing interesting and compelling landing pages, etc. Inbound marketing naturally draws the attention of the right people (or at least it’s supposed to).
And nowadays, the majority of that happens online.
There’s a lot that goes into inbound marketing (blog posts, guest posts, landing pages, keyword strategies, email marketing, website forms, and MUCH more). All of these components are part of a cycle, which goes something like this:
Attract (blog, keywords, social media) > Convert (forms, calls to action, landing pages) > Close (email, signals, workflows) > Delight (events, social)
But instead of overwhelming ourselves by getting into the nitty gritty details of each of these areas, let’s first discuss the one thing that affects all of them…


Get Started with Buyer Personas

Every aspect of inbound marketing should be created with a buyer persona (or personas) in mind.
Buyer personas are fictional characters marketers create through research. These personas (which represent your ideal customer) are then used to influence every marketing action you take – blog posts, landing pages, keyword strategies, email marketing, and more – should all be created with your buyer persona in mind.
Why do they matter?
Good question. All of this stuff sounds nice, but is creating an imaginary customer and a strategy to go along with it actually going to impact your bottom line?
If you’re directing all of your marketing efforts towards the wrong customer, then you’ll attract a whole lot of uninterested NON-customers to your site – which will translate to less REAL leads and little-to-no sales.
Bottom line – blogging, tweeting, email marketing, etc. is useless if you don’t know exactly who you’re trying to reach. No matter what industry you’re in, buyer personas are the key component to a successful inbound marketing strategy.
So how do you find out who your ideal customer is? You do research. No one knows your customers better than you do. And with a few surveys, interviews, website forms, etc. you’ll have an even better idea of who exactly you’re trying to market to (more info on this step in the next installment of this series).
And once you’ve got that part figured out, you can start creating the right marketing materials that will give you the right traffic and the right leads who will end up as customers.


How Do I Get Started?

Warning… this is about to get very motivational speaker-ey. But we promise it will be worth it.

Once you know who you’re trying to market to, it’s important to develop goals to guide you through the process.
The SMART goal process is a good framework to start with because it helps you create an actionable plan to guide your marketing activities over the next few days, weeks and months. Here’s how it goes:
The SMART goal framework can be used for just about anything, but here’s how it relates to inbound marketing:

  • Specific – You probably already have the goal of acquiring more visits, leads, and customers. But how many more do you want? Would you be satisfied with just 2 more? Probably not. If you set specific inbound marketing goals, you’re results will be a direct reflection of what you’ve set out to accomplish.
  • Measurable – Keep track of what works, what doesn’t work, how much money and time you’re spending on marketing, etc. This will allow you to do more of what’s working and less of what isn’t.
  • Achievable – Be realistic. Know how much time you have, how many people are on your team, and what your budget is. Set up goals that are 100% within reach based on all of these factors.
  • Relevant – Make sure your goals relate back to what your company is seeking to accomplish as a whole.
  • Timely – Create a realistic timeframe for accomplishing your goals and all of the steps along the way.

With the SMART goal framework as well as your customer personas in mind, you can begin to organize and implement a marketing strategy that will re-vamp your business and get you more customers.
Areon Reviewed by Areon on . Easy Way to Create an Inbound Marketing Strategy http://codelessinteractive.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/inbound-marketing.gif Inbound marketing is a variety of activities that brings interested prospects IN to your organization. It earns the attention of potential customers by producing relevant content, developing interesting and compelling landing pages, etc. Inbound marketing naturally draws the attention of the right people (or at least it’s supposed to). And nowadays, the majority of that happens online. There’s a lot Rating: 5