Or maybe you have no idea where to begin.
Unfortunately, without a strategy, you are not likely to reach your lead generation goals, no matter how many actions you take.
In order to succeed with inbound marketing, you need a specific, strategic plan of action (we call it your Inbound Marketing Blueprint) to help you accelerate your lead generation.
Your Inbound Marketing Blueprint is the foundation for your entire inbound marketing strategy. It is an actionable, step-by-step roadmap detailing exactly which steps to take, in what order, to accelerate your lead generation through an integrated combination of tactics on your website and via the internet.
The Blueprint revolves around the unique needs of your target audience(s) and the online journey they take as they decide whether—or not—to work with you.
Here at Denamico, we begin every project, both with our clients and for our own marketing, by creating a strategy Blueprint. Here are the exact steps we follow (kudos to DoInbound for sharing their approach with us).
Before you build your strategy, you need to get a lay of the land. You need to know where you're at right now, and where you want to go.
First, determine your business goals. What is your current revenue, and how much would you like your revenue to increase over the next 12 months?
Then determine how well your website is currently generating leads, as well as how many of those leads become clients.
Ask yourself:
Inbound marketing is meant to be a very focused approach, honing in on your ideal customers. In other words, you are not trying to reach everybody with your message; instead, you want to attract and engage the people who most want and need what you offer.
Step 2 in your Blueprint involves creating Buyer Personas, which are fictional representations of your ideal customers based on a combination of research, insights you've gleaned as a result of working with your customers, demographics information, online behavior, surveys and/or interviews that help you gain a deep understanding of their motivations, concerns, questions, and the decision criteria you must address to win their business.
Once you've clarified your Buyer Personas, next map out the Buyer’s Journey of your ideal customers to get crystal clear about what kinds of messages they need and, even more importantly, when they are most likely to be receptive to your message.
Many businesses invest in marketing automation (we recommend Hubspot) and then fail to set up the technology in a way that nurtures leads along the entire buyer's journey, reaching only a tiny fraction of leads, while your "competition is figuring out how to get more out of the 99.99% of the market that is still out there," according to Hubspot.
In your Blueprint, plan out what you will need to configure your marketing automation technology to reflect the personalized experience your potential customers expect:
Now's the time to develop your content plan based on your Buyer Personas, their journey through their decision process, and the topics and information that will answer their questions, concerns, and objections along the way.
Write a list of the premium content offers you will create at each stage (awareness, consideration, and decision), the blog topics, and the lead nurturing email topics that will help engage your ideal prospects through the buyer funnel.
Once you've developed your content plan, you can develop inbound marketing campaign, which are a series of online activities focused on one common goal (typically accelerating lead generation).
Inbound campaigns involve a combination of:
Your Inbound Marketing Blueprint is just one component of the ultimate inbound marketing framework that leads to repeatable, measurable lead-generating results:
Want to learn more about how an Inbound Marketing Blueprint can help you generate more leads? If so, let's schedule a conversation. We'll talk about your business goals and whether we might be a fit to help you reach them.