Is your company ready to take its marketing to the next level? Inbound marketing is worth considering if you’re interested in a cheaper, faster, and more effective way of gaining leads and customers.
When going inbound, you produce helpful, meaningful content that addresses problems that consumers have. You then distribute the right content to the right people at the right time. If you’re seriously thinking of incorporating inbound into your marketing plan, here are some things you should consider prior to going inbound.
What are your goals? What are you hoping to achieve?
When determining your goals, make sure they are specific, measurable, and time-bound. What specifically are you looking to accomplish in three months? Six months? One year? An example of some of our clients’ inbound goals include:
- Increase site traffic by 25% increase 6 months
- Increase leads by 100% in one year
- Increase year over year sales by 50%
Whatever your goals are, they should reflect your business model. By evaluating your goals, you are managing expectations for your business in the upcoming year. When you have determined your goals, you will have focus and a clear objective.
What is your timeline for results?
Are you looking to become a lead machine? While inbound can definitely help you produce more leads, inbound is not great for instant gratification. Rather, it’s a long-term marketing method. Make sure you note how pressing your deadlines are and manage your expectations.
Recommended Reading: When Will My Inbound Marketing Strategy Take Off?
Who are you targeting?
It is impossible to create an effective marketing strategy if you don’t know who your buyer personas are. And while it might feel tempting, targeting everyone with your marketing actually has the converse result of targeting no one.
When going inbound, it is crucial to identify who your product or service is for. Pinpointing demographics, down to your ideal customer’s challenges and speech patterns, is crucial to getting your brand in front of the right audience.
Is your website ready for inbound marketing?
In order for inbound to work successfully, you should be able to easily add blog posts and content to your website. The ability to edit your page layouts is also extremely helpful. When you’re looking to add content in a particular fashion or properly place a CTA, the ability to manipulate your individual pages, and their layouts, is important.
Are you promoting your brand by allowing your viewers to share your page and follow you on other platforms? Adding social media icons to your site footer can promote customer interactions. Preparing your site for going inbound will help get the ball rolling.
Do you have a CRM System in place?
Are you tracking your leads and how they are behaving? Can you quickly state your conversion rate? If so, you likely use a CRM tool. A CRM platform like HubSpot instantly provides you with dozens of metrics about your business.
You can quickly analyze and assess what’s working and what isn’t in one easy to understand platform. You can then compile the data to determine where your strategies may need tweaking. If you’re planning on going inbound, it’s crucial to be able to easily access your performance data, and we strongly suggest implementing a CRM system.
Are your content creation process & publishing frequency ready?
Are you pumping out content consistently for your viewers? Remember that while some visitors are first time viewers of your site, others have become loyal to your content. Make sure your followers and subscribers have a dependable flow of new and remarkable content. Consistency is important in helping your followers to anticipate your next post!
Are you following best SEO practices?
Search Engine Optimization is what helps attract strangers to your site. Search engines provide the most relevant, useful, and trust worthy answers. Your marketing team should always strive to have your keywords appear in the top 10 organic results on Google. This way, once you’ve created remarkable content, it will be accessible to your buyer personas.
Going Inbound: In-House or Agency?
Everyone can write a blog and keep up a social media account, right? Then why are some businesses more successful at doing so than others? The truth of the matter is that it takes an enormous amount of skill to conduct inbound marketing.
If you’d like to do your marketing in-house, you’ll need to hire people who are skilled at research, writing, editing, graphic design, and social media. You can also outsource your marketing to an agency, which can turn out to be more cost effective in the end.
Looking to go Inbound? Contact New Perspective today and learn about how we can utilize inbound marketing to take your business to the next level!
