Optimize 3.0 Inbound Marketing Blog

Inbound Marketing Plan | The Essential Roadmap

Posted by Doug Kirk  Apr 22, 2013 11:07:00 AM

From industry best practices and our own experience here at Optimize 3.0, there are six key components of a successful marketing campaign.  We detailed those here to assist your ongoing inbound marketing plans:

1) Produce a compelling offer

Eveything starts with your buyer persona.  Who are your ideal customers?  What are their biggest concerns, needs, and interests?  Where do they hang out online – social media, or blogs – and what kinds of content do they prefer? Definitely involve the sales team to help build these profiles. Design a content plan that targets these personas with both blogs and premium downloads.   

2) Place the offer on your website

Creatie a landing page.  This is a web page that features a description and an image of the offer and a form for visitors to fill out in order to receive the resource.  This transaction is type of an information exchange, in which the visitor gets the offer they are interested in and you receive their contact information. They transition into their next lifecycle stage, that of leads. This is the process of lead generation.

3) Attach the offer to automated lead nurturing

Lead nurturing is an automated series of emails or other communications that pre-qualify early-stage leads before handing them over to sales. These  are also known as workflows, marketing automation, drip marketing, and auto-responders. their goal is to make your new leads more sales-ready.

4) Promote via email

Your email list is one of the most powerful contact databases that you have access to. (Your social following represents another growing database).  One example would be alerting your contacts about a new whitepaper you have released or invite them to attend a webinar.  These dedicated emails help you set up the context to introduce the main call-to-action. Dedicated sends can be used to reach out to your entire email database or just a segment that you think this marketing offer applies to.

5) Promote via blog & social media channels

Now that you have announced the release of your new offer to existing contacts in your email database, you can start looking for other opportunities to drive traffic to your landing page. This is where you can leverage your blog and social media channels. Blogging has many benefits.  No the least of which is that Google loves sites that produce engaging, fresh content.  Be sure to blog at least once per week.  A blog is also an ideal means to distribute content to your social media channels.  Social media augments the reach of your content and supports your lead generation efforts. Tip: Be sure to add a call-to-action to your landing pages with the premium content offer at the bottom of each blog post.

6) Measure results

There are a wide range of metrics that you need to look at in order to evaluate if your campaign was successful or not. If you are trying to have a quick peek at your overall performance, you should start with a look at the analytics tied to the landing page that hosts your marketing offer.  Other analytics to monitor include the source of your leads.  Are they from organic, direct, referral or social traffic?  How are your call-to-action buttons performing?  Advanced metrics such as these provide valuable insight to see if your inbound plan has been successful.

Download our free Inbound Marketing Plan Roadmap ebook: 

 Free eBook Essential Inbound  Marketing Roadmap

 

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Topics: inbound marketing, Blogging Benefits, Online Marketing Essentials