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2016 is posed to be an even bigger year for inbound marketing. With the increasing popularity of ad blocking software, companies will be working harder to engage with customers organically. For companies wanting to get started however, things can be very daunting. There are so many aspects to getting started with demand generation that it is easy to become paralyzed right at the start. But before you get ready to start giving out free ebooks and webinars, make sure you have the basics in place to actually get results for your efforts.
Getting Your Website Ready
For content marketing, your website is your most crucial asset. Depending on your business model, every customer you serve will see it. But not just every customer, but every prospective customer too. The most important thing to remember is that no two customers are alike. This means that your website should have multiple ways to engage your business. Having different types of calls to action, and different ways to connect with your business, will help ensure you are engaging customers in any part of the buying process. Some customers will be ready to buy, but others will be months or even years away from taking the plunge. It is important to keep this in mind when working on your website.
Organize Your Blogging Schedule
No inbound marketing plan is complete with out a blog. Not only does it help your business earn traffic from social media, but it will increase your organic reach on search engines as well. If writing is not your strong suit, there are plenty of freelancers waiting for the job. But just because you’re not comfortable writing a blog doesn’t mean you can’t start a podcast or post video content. Both can make for excellent blogs. Just make sure to set a schedule and be consistent.
A great way to manage your blogging schedule is through an app called Trello, It allows you to easily plan a blogging schedule and keep track of everything that needs to be done. Best of all, if you have multiple contributors to your blog, Trello is a great resource to help you collaborate with others.
Launching Your Social Media
To get your social media off the ground, Facebook and Twitter are the ones that matter. Instagram, and Pinterest too depending on your business. With that in mind, get these accounts started with a great bio and profile picture. Engaging and following a handful of your competitors followers is a great way to get started growing your follower base, but before hand, put together a social media calendar of posts your audience will appreciate. Relevant blogs and articles for your industry, infographics, and relevant video content are great things to post to help you build trust with your audience. You should also include your blogs to help increase your web traffic. In order to manage all of your accounts in once place, Social Scheduler is a fantastic tool that will help you schedule and keep track of your social media accounts with both free and paid options available to fit your needs.
Setting Up Your CRM
A CRM is a huge part of your inbound marketing strategy and it’s so crucial, it’s a wonder why it’s not mentioned more often. Your CRM should be set up to capture leads from your site and have the ability to send out drip email campaigns. Setting up drip campaigns allows you to tailor different content to go out depending on how the lead first interacted with your company. For instance, if they downloaded an e-book on how to optimize their site for SEO, the drip campaign can be centered around similar content and offers can be crafted with this in mind. A great CRM will start doing the work for you to help convert leads once you get it set up. See our blog on choosing a CRM for guidelines to choosing the right one.
Once you’ve got these four things optimized, you’ll have the groundwork in place for a great inbound marketing plan. The important thing to remember is that the whole point of demand generation is to build trust. All the information you give out for free is to that end. When your audience trusts you, they will be more willing to buy from you.
