Even though the concept of inbound marketing is fairly simple – offer high-quality content that draws the attention of prospects and turn them into customers – many attempts at its execution fail short in one way or another. Why? Because marketers find themselves lost in the sea of overly complicated strategies, obscure tips, and blatant misinformation. Our guide will show you how you can succeed every time and reach all your goals.
There are three main questions that you need to constantly keep asking yourself in order to create a solid inbound marketing campaign: “To whom am I marketing to?”; “What added value am I offering?”; “How do I offer this value?” Let’s take a look at each question, to give you a better idea about what makes them so important for any inbound marketing campaign.
- Question 1: Whom?
Remember that at the core of every inbound campaign is the perception of added value. But each person on this planet has different priorities, goals, and aspirations; what one person perceives to be of great worth may seem totally insignificant to someone else.
That’s why you need to carefully consider who exactly is your target customer and craft a realistic persona according to your findings. Imagine that you are writing a novel, but, instead of your imagination, you have to use real evidence as a source material for your character. What does this character like? What would grab his or her attention and even lead to procrastination? Is there something this person really hates?
You have to keep constantly refining your buyer persona, to keep up with new trends and changes on the market. It’s not an easy job, but it’s the foundation upon which everything else stands.
- Question 2: What?
Once again, the keyword is “value”. The content itself doesn’t matter nearly as much as we would often like to think. Instead, what truly matters is what your prospects see as valuable. What you offer has to align the persona that you’ve decided on. It’s impossible to successfully target, for example, teenagers while refusing to produce the type of content they may perceive as having the most value.
Figuring out what content would work best is then simply a matter of constant trial and error. You can get a good idea of what could work by looking at other sites that target a similar audience, but, at the end of the day, is only through experience and analysis of many important metrics, such as social shares and visitors, that you learn how to attract the most attention.
- Question 3: How?
With the first and the second question answered, it should be easy to figure out how to reach your prospects. Your inbound marketing strategy is like a large funnel with a very wide opening that gets progressively narrower. The opening of the funnel represents the type of content and means of distribution that are accessible to as many people as possible.
As the funnel gets narrower, you have to start separating your audience into various groups according to their individual preferences. A/B testing will help you find out what works and what doesn’t without putting off too many people.
You reach the end of the funnel when you convince someone that your content or product is exactly what they (and possible everyone else) need.