mantras

Of Inbound Marketing

Hub Monks

Inbound marketing is a holistic process that encapsulates all online marketing activities to give you a single, scalable platform that attracts prospects by educating them. The core of inbound is to bring relevant prospects by giving information they are seeking.

In order to succeed in your inbound marketing pilgrimage, you will have to chant these 7 mantras.

  • 1

    Define goals

  • 2

    Identify audience

  • 3

    Create/Optimize
    digital assets

  • 4

    Build visibility

  • 5

    Generate leads

  • 6

    Nurture leads

  • 7

    Win customers

So, let’s embark on this exciting journey to attain eternal knowledge on inbound.

define goals

With the help of SMART Goals you are able to set up realistic goals that carve the path for all your marketing activities. These goals help you measure the performance of inbound activities and the progress based on your previous status for the specific key performance indicator (KPI).

what is SMART Goal ?

  • aim
  • 123
  • right
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  • s

    Specific

    Define goal as clear as possible. The questions that go are Who, What, Where, Why, When, Which.

  • m

    Measurable

    Is the goal measurable? Check out the current benchmarks for the goals that you are considering.

  • a

    Attainable

    Is the goal reasonable enough based on the current status?

  • r

    Relevant

    Does the goal fulfil your business challenges?

  • t

    Timely

    There should be a mandatory time limit with your goals.

goals
Example Goal: Increase visits by 80% (10,000 visits per month to 18,000 visits per month) by December 31, 2017

Tools That Help You Define Your Inbound Marketing Goals

  • goolge analytic
  • smartsheet
  • goals-on-track
  • hubspot
& many more...

Identify Audience

Just when you have set up your goals, the main question that arises is who will help you achieve these goals. The answer is your target audience in the form of visitors, leads, or customers. Understanding your buyer personas will guide the complete inbound marketing process.

The offering and value proposition need to resonate with the right audience for whom the following data should be on hand:

  • Personal info
  • Goals and challenges
  • Professional info
  • Values & fears
  • Potential objections

Reality Check

  • 71%

    reality

    71% of companies exceeding revenue and lead goals have documented personas.

  • 56%

    reality

    56% of companies have created higher quality leads using personas.

  • 90%

    reality

    90% of the companies are clear about their buyers after creating personas.

Tools That Help You Define Your Personas

  • makemypassion
  • xtensio
  • hubspot
& many more...

Create/Optimize digital assets

Your goals and buyer personas will guide you in creating targeted digital assets. Of all the assets, websites and landing pages are the best salespersons. There will be various considerations to create high-performing assets. We have mentioned some advanced practices here:

Advanced practices for a futureproof inbound dedicated website

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Personalized content

94% of senior-level executives believe delivering personalization is critical or important to reaching customers according to a recent study conducted by PWC’s Digital Services group.

Mobile-First Approach

According to a report by Forrester, 59% smartphone users expect websites to be mobile-friendly. This makes responsive websites a pre-requisite for all development projects.

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Conversion Opportunities

Provide ample opportunities to your prospect to get in touch.

  • Landing pages: Offer something valuable to your prospects.
  • Smart Calls-to-action: Life-cycle based personalized call-to-action.
  • Smart Forms: Progressive profiling enable personalized forms so that same information is not entered.

Tools To Create & Optimize Digital Assets

  • hubspot
  • unbounce
  • optimizely
  • marketo
  • landpages
& many more...
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Blogging

With every page on your blog, you are increasing chances of higher visibility.

  • 81% of U.S. online consumers trust information and advice from blogs.
  • 92% of companies who blog multiple times per day have acquired a customer from their blog.
  • B2B marketers who use blogs generate 67% more leads than those that do not.
The 5 Factors Of Successful Blogging
  • Linkable
  • Scanable
  • Sociable
  • Searchable
  • Valuable

Tools To Help You in Blogging

  • wordpress
  • hellobar
  • hubspot
  • coschedule
& many more...

Build Visibility

There are a handful of online marketing techniques that helps your business gain
higher online visibility on the assets that are built.

Ultimate Online Marketing Tactics

  • Social media marketing
  • Search engine optimization (SEO)
  • Social media paid ads
  • Display advertising
  • Pay-per-click marketing

Content marketing helps you establish thought leadership, brand awareness, and most importantly gets valuable visitors to
your website or landing pages. The most popular forms of content you could put your hands into:

  • Blogging
  • Infographics
  • Videos
  • Whitepapers
  • Guest posting

Tools To Help You in Visibility

  • hubspot
  • semrush
  • buzzsumo
  • buzstream
  • hootsuit
  • followerwonk
& many more...

Generate Leads

Now that you have the visitors on your website, you will want some valuable information from them
to boost your other inbound activities.

How your customers reach you

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Decide On Your Lead Generation Assets

  • Information seekers love data in the form of eBooks, whitepapers, infographics and more.
  • Provide gated-content in order to gather information from more visitors.
  • Place relevant forms across all landing pages.
  • All the content marketing tactics could be implemented to attract leads.

What to observe in your lead generation campaign

  • With the help of tools like Hotjar, measure the effectiveness and engagement of your content through the heatmaps.
  • Which message and format is resonating the most with your audience?
  • Try A/B testing or multi-variate testing on your lead generation programs. Services like Visual Website Optimizer and Optimizely will take testing to the next level.

Tools for creating Lead generation assets

  • optinmonster
  • ninjaforms
  • hotjar
& many more...

Nurture Leads

The leads need to move further into the buyer’s journey to fulfil their goals.

The Buyer’s Journey Involved In Lead Nurturing

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  • Awareness
  • Consideration
  • Decision

Your next step is to nurture the relationship with them and qualify them for the
next step of the buyer’s journey.

The best lead nurturing activities:

  • Email workflows automation

    You will need to automate a series of workflows on the basis of the buyer’s journey level your prospects are in.

  • Personalized call-to-action on the website

    Based on their lifecycle in your marketing funnel, your prospects will get relevant calls-to-action that will slide down further into the buying process.

  • Personalized forms

    Progressive profiling with forms will ensure that you get new information on every visit from the prospects.

Qualifying Leads/Lead Scoring

  • What is their role/job title?
  • What is the size of their company? Does your company serve to the given size?
  • How do they match your buyer personas?
  • Do their needs match the solution that you are providing?
  • Are they the only decision makers? Or, are there more people involved?
  • How frequently they are engaging with your marketing campaign?

Set up Lead Scoring mechanism through your
marketing platforms.

Identify criteria for lead scoring. Some of the most common criteria are:

  • Engagement & frequency
  • Lead capture forms

Determine point values for each of the criteria that you have listed. For ex:

  • 3 times visitor should be assigned 100 points.
  • Webinar attendees should be assigned 500 points.

Establish threshold to determine an SQL (Qualified Leads)
that could be passed to the sales team.

Tools That Automate Lead Nurturing

  • hubspot
  • marketo
  • infer
  • sales-wings
  • acton
& many more...

Win Customers

By the time the sales team reaches your prospects (or vice versa),
almost 85% of the information is consumed by the prospects.
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All the efforts that go into your lead nurturing activities empower your prospects to take a decision that results into purchase and a long-lasting trust on your brand.

The lead data gets transferred to the CRM and your marketing tool takes a backseat for a while as your CRM takes the top-gear to educate your sales representatives about the needs of leads that help them in taking on the conversation from exactly the point where the customers are in the life-cycle.

Tools To Boost CRM Process

  • salesforce
  • hubspotcrm
  • sugercrm
& many more...

Download Our Compilation Of The Best
Tools For Success With All Inbound

Mantras

Conclusion

Businesses need the support of a marketing system, wherein the components could be picked up at any point to test the effectiveness. The methodologies of inbound marketing help in overcoming the stagnant growth when reiterated and improved at various stages.