By John Bonini
Jan 28, 2013
Topics:
Inbound MarketingSubscribe now and get the latest podcast releases delivered straight to your inbox.
The following is an excerpt from IMPACT's popular ebook, "The Beginner's Guide to Inbound Marketing." For more actionable advice for improve your marketing, be sure to check out the full ebook.
The first part of any successful inbound marketing plan is to identify the goals and current marketing challenges a prospective client faces. The target market must be established and also how they currently use the Internet as part of their buying process.
From there, an understanding of what the available budget is for an inbound marketing plan is discussed as well as how fast you want to grow. Lastly, it must be determined how this marketing program will provide a return on investment. Inbound marketing is not an expense; rather an investment in the growth of your business.
The Services of a Powerful Inbound Marketing Program
Website Development
A website is the hub of any inbound marketing campaign. It is critical that any inbound marketing strategy start with a lead generating website, preferably on a content management system such as HubSpot or WordPress. It must be clear to the visitor what you do and why they are on your website within the first five seconds of being there.
Your website also needs to be easy to navigate and has to be built using on-page SEO best practices. Lastly, with a rapid increase in the use of the Internet on smart phones such as iPhone, it’s now essential that all websites are mobile friendly.
Drive Relevant Website Traffic
Once a powerful website has been built, it’s now time to start generating some serious traffic. These are common inbound marketing traffic generating services:
Blogging
Blogging is an incredible tool used to drive relevant traffic to your website. By blogging, you’re effectively setting yourself aside as an industry expert. Businesses that blog also generate 55% more web traffic than those who don’t.
Be sure to check out our free ebook on “How to Start a Business Blog.”
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the process of ensuring high search engine rankings for a particular item or keyword on your website. This is a proven process. When your website is optimized efficiently, you can effectively drive more relevant traffic to your website. If you need help boosting your SEO, check out our FREE ebook on “10 Things You Can Do Right Now to Improve Your SEO.”
Social Media Marketing
Social media provides opportunities for you and your company to engage in two-way dialogue with visitors, customers, and fans. This is important as your company can share deals and insider information that can raise awareness for your brand.
Convert Traffic To Leads
Once your website increases its traffic flow, lead generation techniques are used in order to convert these website visitors into potential customers who will buy your product or service.
Development of Attractive Offers
The creation and implementation of attractive content such as coupons, ebooks, and other offers on your website are an important tool in providing visitors incentive to buy. In exchange for these offers, contact information will be attained to further increase your connections with consumers.
Landing Pages and Fillable Forms
Once your website has attractive offers in place, you’ll want to make sure there are effective landing pages and forms for your website visitors to access once they have clicked on an offer. This helps to convert a visitor into a lead, and eventually, a sale.
Calls-to-Action
An effective call-to-action is an image or text that prompts visitors to take action, either by subscribing to a newsletter, requesting a product demo, or through attractive offers.
Convert Leads to Sales
Once your website is optimized to effectively generate leads, the obvious next step is converting these leads to sales. Through various lead intelligence strategies, following through on lead conversion can be done in an efficient manner.
Lead Management
Using lead management software, storing your leads for future needs such as segmentation and nurturing campaigns is an important step in the process of converting these leads to sales.
Lead Segmentation
Once you have an organized database of your leads, it’s important to separate them into categories based on their needs or goals. This information is attainable based on which offers they clicked on.
Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing is the process of engaging potential leads using relevant and timely communications, such as e-mails, to
build trust, generate interest, and raise company awareness until they are ready to move forward in the sales process.
E-Mail Marketing
Using e-mail marketing as an integrated tool with an inbound marketing program allows you to take full advantage of technology and trends to help you get more value out of your lists, prospects, leads and customers.
Closed-Loop Reporting
Closed loop reporting refers to the process of measuring the effectiveness of a particular advertisement on your website by tracking which ad visitors took action from.
Measure Everything
Measuring your marketing efforts is a significant process in regards to the success of your company and online efforts. Some of the things we measure include website analytics and competitor tracking.
Website Analytics
It’s very important for you to take full advantage of your online presence and fully optimize your website for success. It’s equally important to make the necessary changes to stay current, and we’ll take advantage of our analytical tools to make both calculated and measured changes.
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