When it comes to inbound marketing, lofty expectations don’t always reflect reality. Marketers cannot expect to accomplish their inbound goals without adopting a few crucial elements into their strategy. While there is no one path to guaranteed success, at a minimum, the following six elements should be integrated into your lineup of inbound marketing elements.
Blogging
Merely having a blog isn’t enough, staying active is critical to gaining traction from your blogging activities. While it’s tempting to include a blog in your week-to-week or even day-to-day planning, don’t. Establish a quarterly editorial calendar so that someone has ownership of each day you intend to post. Not doing so opens up opportunities for skipping scheduled posts and contributes to added stress.
While a consistent voice is important, don’t be afraid to bring colleagues into the action and give them opportunities to author posts. Remember, their perspective may reach a demographic in a different way than you have.
Content Management
Any content that you produce should be valuable, you can choose whether it’s educational, interesting, or entertaining. It’s simple really, valuable content will drive interaction. There is no shortage of valuable content you can contribute, in addition to blog posts, your content can include such things as ebooks, infographics, white papers, and more. Try not to pigeon hole your company into only one type of content piece as this may get stale for your potential leads. Cast a spell on your readers, diversify your content to keep them engaged and excited about your offers.
Email Marketing
Sending email communications can be a very effective mode of communication to your potential leads. Any offer that you post on your website and blog should also be promoted to your email distribution list. By establishing a promotional process across platforms, you can make sure you’re reaching your prospects across several types of media.
The dedicated blog reader may not be subscribed to your communications, the reverse is true as well. An email template can make this process easier and should include basics like your company website, contact information, a blog subscription call-to-action.
Call – To – Action
Don’t leave anything open to interpretation, direct your leads to exactly what you want them to do. Do you have a complimentary eBook you’d like your readers to download? Your Call-To-Action should be large, clickable, and feature copy along the lines of ‘Download Now’.
While you want to make sure these graphic buttons stand out, also be sure to make this graphic consistent with the branding of your overall website. Our blog post, Best Blogging Practices: Creating Effective Calls to Action can help steer you in the right direction.
Social Media
Leverage your social media accounts to drive traffic to the content you have worked so diligently to produce. LinkedIn groups specific to your specialty are a great place from which to offer content to those with similar needs. If your followers are more active on FaceBook or Twitter, use these platforms to launch conversation, drive readers to your website, and kick off the lead generation process.
Strategy
What type of process do you have in place to map out your goals, and the actionable tasks you need to take to achieve these goals? Whether you assess your strategy on an annual, quarterly or monthly basis, it is critical to have one. Ensure that all of staff members (you may be a one man show) are fully aware of what the goals are and how each of these goals will be measured. Regular reporting will help you track progress and make adjustments to your strategy where needed.
Hop to It!
Each of these six elements on its own will not pave the path to success. Integrated together, however, these elements can help pave the path to success. As you get your inbound marketing elements integrated, make sure to keep ROI at the forefront of your priorities.
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