The 4 fundamentals of Inbound Marketing success
About the Author: Noa Eshed
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Introduction
Inbound success does not happen overnight. However, if you understand the value of creating long lasting relationships with potential customers, this post will break down the 4 fundamentals of Inbound Marketing success.
Be sure to review this post before you set off to creating an Inbound Marketing strategy.
1. Identify your buyer personas
These are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers. It’s important to understand who you are trying to reach. What are their behavioral patterns? Their demographics? Their goals?
You can research and figure this out by:
- Speaking with your sales and learning who your current best customers are and why
- researching the web (specifically websites such as Quora, blogs and industry forums)
- making educated guesses
- Interviewing your current customers. Focus on:
- Background
- Demographics
- Mannerisms
- Primary goals at work
- Primary challenges on their to success
- What are their common objections
Here are some questions that will help you get started:
(source: HubSpot)
Figure out how you can help your buyer personas overcome their challenges and reach their goals
You can learn more about how to define your buyer personas.
2. Use the buyer’s journey
“73% of consumers prefer a personalized online shopping experience” HubSpot.
In the awarness stage, a prospect could be asking themselves “My foot aches when I step, especially in the morning or after I go running. What’s wrong with me?”.
In the consideration stage, the prospect would realize “I have an infection in my heel. What are my options for releiving or curing my symptoms?”.
In the decision stage the prospect would be taking into consideration the following options “I can see my family doctor, I can try acupuncture or go to a private orthopedist. The latter costs a lot but I have insurance”.
Approaching the prospect with an offer, at a stage where they do not even know what their problem is, would be entirely out of context.
Make sure to interact with your prospects in correlation with their stage of the buyer’s journey. You can learn more about the buyer’s journey.
3. Create remarkable content that is easy to read and navigate
“Stop thinking like marketers and start acting like humans” Dharmesh Shah.
Your content should always be providing contextual added value to your prospects. Make it as educational as possible. Note that educational does not mean teaching them who you are. It means teaching them about how to solve their challenges and what solutions you can provide to their problems.
Inbound Marketing = content + context.
On average, conversion rates are 20% higher when using contextual marketing.
Here are a few best practices:
- Make sure you are using keywords that are relevant to your buyer personas, at their relevant stage of the buyer’s journey.
- Go easy on your prospects, always make sure they are able to easily navigate to every piece of content
- Be creative but try to keep it short and friendly. People are impatient – they want bottom lines.
4. Leverage your content
Always distribute your content via:
- Your blog
- Social media
- Join LinkedIn groups and post your content there
- Post on Twitter
- Post on your Facebook page
- Get your entire team to share the content and engage
- Landing pages – when built well they are like employees working for you and generating new leads:
- Always include the company’s logo
- Use a form to gather visitor information
- Remove distractions
- Use as few templates as possible
- Use empty spaces to help the information you’d like to deliver stand out
- Create a visual hierarchy with text, colors and imagery
- Feature a list of benefits
You can learn more about how to create effective converting landing pages
- Relevant calls to action within your website, blog and landing pages. Click here to read more about how to create attention grabbing, persuasive CTAs
- Email marketing:
- Send your prospects personalized emails that are relevant to their stage of the buyer’s journey and to any other info you have gathered about them and their interaction with your company
- Always set one goal per each email
- Track your emails performance, look out for delivery rates and click rates. Here are 6 pro tips on email marketing that will boost your performance.
Conclusion
Each Inbound Marketing strategy should include an understanding of:
- Who you are trying to reach and how you can help them
- What is the buyer’s journey and how it applies to your prospects
- What content would be most relevant to your prospects
- How to leverage your content
Once you understand the above essential four, you can dive deeper and learn how you can integrate these fundamentals within your organization in order to drive growth, generate qualified leads and achieve your goals.
I invite you to download our How To Create an Effective Inbound Marketing Strategy FREE eBook in order to learn how to create a long lasting inbound strategy.
Good luck!
Noa Eshed
Noa is the co-author of the Amazon no.1 Bestseller "The Smart Marketer's Guide to Google AdWords" and co-host of the podcast "Real Life Superpowers". She's a content lover, certified journalist & lawyer (Hebrew U). She practices martial arts & yoga. She's been consulting and helping businesses create a significant presence online since 2010.
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Noa is the co-author of the Amazon no.1 Bestseller "The Smart Marketer's Guide to Google AdWords" and co-host of the podcast "Real Life Superpowers". She's a content lover, certified journalist & lawyer (Hebrew U). She practices martial arts & yoga. She's been consulting and helping businesses create a significant presence online since 2010.
