Did you know that over 90% of B2B buyers start their research online? If your potential customers can’t find you, they may find your competitor. By improving your inbound marketing campaigns you can look to be the market leader and have your marketing become a source of valuable information to potential customers. Below are 6 areas to focus on when developing a strong inbound marketing campaign to improve leads and reach business goals.
1. Buyer Personas
Having clearly defined buyer personas should be the first stage in building your inbound marketing campaign. Having your personas clearly defined and in place will enable your business to focus its attention on speaking to these personas, to create and tailor your content to speak to the individual needs of each these personas. Thus crating much more targeted messaging.
2. Creating Valuable Content
Creating valuable content should be next when planning your inbound marketing campaign. Adding exciting and engaging content to your website in the form of ebooks, webinars and videos to meet the needs of your personas, will have your leads and customers coming back to you for more information. You want your content to be educational and helpful and not a sales pitch! The modern consumer hates being sold to and wants to learn before making a decision. By writing valuable and frequent content, your business will be seen as the market leader and generate more leads.
3. Blog Posts That Drive Interest And Educate Readers
Creating enticing blogs that educate your target audience on topics within your business is a great way to ensure that prospective clients and customers trust your business. By writing blogs that meet the needs of your buyer personas, this will set you apart from your competitors and boost the chances of your site being found first in search engines. Stay away from posts that over sell to the reader and posts that don’t add value or educate. At the bottom of the blog post include your call to action to capture the reader as a lead.
4. Lead generating website
Your website has the potential to be constantly generating business leads. Part of your inbound marketing campaign should include lead generation campaigns – a series of strategies and tactics built around an offer that brings prospects to a landing page on your website where you collect the visitor’s contact information. The best lead generating campaigns include ways to promote a special offer both on your website and other vehicles including social media, pay-per-click advertising, and e-newsletters.
5. Sales and marketing working together
Establishing a clear and well-defined communication process between sales and marketing to help them align in order to continually move forward is the next step to creating a successful inbound campaign. Each team should be clear of their role in the inbound marketing strategy to successfully generate and convert leads. For example, to generate new and exciting content and blog posts to attract more leads, the marketing team need to hear from the front line sales staff on lead challenges and sales issues they hear direct form prospects. This information should be passed on to the marketing team to create valuable content to answer the prospects’ concerns.
6. Use Social Media to promote content
Always promote your content such as blog posts, new eBooks or offers on social media. When promoting your business on social media, take notice of where your persona is engaging the most. If your target persona has a high interaction with LinkedIn for example, spend more time and promote your content there. If they are on all social media channels then promote your content on all social media. Decide where your biggest reach and impact will be and allocate time there to gain leads for the sales department. Just like your blogs and content - don’t just sell your business on social media, add value to the customer.
By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your buyer personas, inbound marketing attracts qualified prospects to your business and keeps them coming back for more.
Article by Dale Bonser
