According to research, less than 10% of people successfully keep their New Year’s resolutions.

If growing your business is on your list of resolutions for 2018, what’s your strategy for making this goal a reality?

One proven strategy for scalable growth? Inbound marketing.

But what is inbound marketing? If you’re wondering what it is, or how it gets results, you’ve come to the right place.

Here are 5 Frequently Asked Questions we get as an inbound marketing agency. And we've included best practices for leveraging inbound to drive growth for your business.

Inbound marketing describes a way of marketing and selling. Instead of interrupting people to impose unwanted messages on them, it seeks to empower consumers through useful information and advice.

With inbound marketing, you can say goodbye to inefficient, expensive techniques like cold calling, print ads, and direct mail.

Instead, meet your prospects where they're at and provide them with information that will help them. Inbound marketing attracts prospective customers to your website by providing relevant, helpful content that's tailored to where the prospect is in their buyer's journey.

Curious about what types of content can help turn your prospects into leads and customers? See #2.

2) How do marketers know what content to create for my industry?

Inbound marketers are great researchers. By researching your buyer persona, conducting customer and team interviews, doing SEO research and doing competitor analysis, we are able to develop your ideal buyer persona profile and identify what questions they want or need answered during each stage of their 'buyer's journey'.

We use all of this research to create a content map that responds to your target audience’s pain points, wants, and needs. This includes a 90-day editorial calendar of SEO-optimized blogs, vlogs, or videos, and corresponding offers or “Calls to Action.”

As you go through the first 90-day campaign, we monitor the performance of these campaigns, and use this data to continually develop new strategy to increase traction and engagement with your audience.

3) What types of “content” does inbound marketing focus on?

Inbound marketers specialize in creating relevant, educational content that speaks to your buyer persona. In general, there are two main types of content: written and video. We distribute this content across a wide variety of platforms, from email newsletters to social media.

Content creation is a team sport, but the ideal situation depends on what works best for your company. Here are a few possible scenarios on how to get your team involved.

• Maybe someone in your office is an excellent writer and armed with a strategic plan of what content is needed, they can create great content that will drive results.

• For others, they might have loads of information and insight in their head, but lack the time to get it down on paper. In those cases, it might be best to have a writer interview them and write the article on their behalf.

• Or maybe one of your team members would be great on camera and could be interviewed for a video.

4) How are content creators who are not familiar with my industry able to write for my audience?

Our writers and videographers are expert storytellers with backgrounds in journalism and communication. They are skilled at researching, interviewing subject matter experts, and synthesizing information in order to convert details about your company into compelling stories, articles, and videos that create engagement and drive growth for your business.

Our team has created content for a myriad of industries, from technology, healthcare and accounting to homebuilding, retail, and dance. Whatever industry you’re in, we’re excited to meet you and discover what makes you and your customers tick. Then, we’ll capitalize on that information to drive traffic to your website and increase your success.

5) How can we make sure we are set up to be successful in Inbound Marketing and actually achieve results?

Here are 5 key strategies for inbound marketing success:

1. Your leadership commits to wanting to be the best teachers in your space.
2. You create an inbound marketing strategy (what we call aBlueprint) before you start.
3. You identify your gaps (in bandwidth and expertise) and have a plan for how you're going to fill them.
4. You commit to executing your strategy over the long term (ie at least 18 to 24 months).
5. You identify your goals and KPIs before you start (also part of the Blueprint) and have a system in place to measure and analyze your results monthly, so you can continuously improve.

Are you ready to make 2018 a great year for your business?

Don’t wait until it’s too late. Let’s talk and find the marketing strategy you need today.

We’ll listen to your needs, challenges and goals. Then, we’ll evaluate your current marketing plan and present you with specific suggestions on how your business can generate more leads and close more sales.