V4.24: 6 Things to Think About Before Diving into Inbound Marketing

We talk a lot about the importance of social media and inbound marketing simply because it works. It is a proven technique to help your business. We recently came across a very relevant and powerful article that we wanted to share with you. Conversion Day writes the about the six essential questions one needs to ask before getting started with inbound marketing practices. The point of these questions is to help give you some direction when thinking about some new marketing strategies.

1. “Do you have a clearly defined buyer persona?” You have to know who your ideal customers are in order to market to them. These personas are your foundation for the rest of your strategy. Understanding, developing and maintaining buyer personas will make or break your marketing career. Understanding your clients “needs” will keep them engaged and intrigued with your content. It is imperative to fully utilize this technique, as it is too easy to say that your target audience is a small start-up company, but the real questions lay underneath. Ask things like what their main concerns are, what kind of things they are involved in, what they value, what motivates them, and so on.
2. “Do you have a keyword strategy that is aiming to help this persona?” After you have discovered and defined your buyer personas, you now need to find out how to bring them to you. This is the attract stage. Once they have found your site, you can help them, educate them, and relieve them of their stressors. Keep your keywords very targeted and specific.
3. “Are you blogging 2-3 times a week?” Now this one can be thought of in a different way. We think that the amount of blogging you do quite depends on how big your company is. You don’t need to blog three times a week when you are a very small company. The main thing to remember is to keep it consistent. Blog AT LEAST once a week and post it at the same time each day. The bigger you get and the more followers you have, you can increase your blogging to two or three times a week. We know how important blogging is—we’ve talked about it in many blogs.
4. “Are you generating leads through premium content, and do you have tools to allow you to do this well?” Blogs are great, but not the be-all-end-all. You should also include some white paper, e-books, kits, etc. Focus on really and truly understanding your buyer personas and give them what they want to read. Remember to use your CTA’s to bring traffic to this content.
5. “Are you nurturing your contact database with relevant content and the right channel?” Once someone follows your call to action to a landing page and downloads an e-book (or whatever it is you’re offering), that person generally becomes a Lead. You have to make sure you are nurturing your relationship with that lead and continuously giving them what they want. Communicate with them with the channel that they prefer—whether that is email, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
6. “Can you prove ROI clearly and quickly?” Of course, with everything, we must constantly be measuring results. Here are two questions to think about in regards to your metrics: How long does it take to produce reports at the end of each month? How satisfied are you and/or your customers with current ROI?  Knowing how you are faring is an important part of getting better. When you understand what works and what doesn’t, you are allowing yourself to improve.