
Inbound marketing is quickly becoming the preferred method for marketing teams of all kinds. According to HubSpot's most recent State of Inbound report, "3 out of 4 marketers across the globe prioritize an inbound approach to marketing." The future is now, and there's never been a better time to dive into the inbound pool.
Of course, planning an annual inbound marketing plan can be a daunting task, especially when you're new to the approach. When you're ready to do your planning for your next year of inbound marketing activities, here are the important elements that you'll need to make sure you plan and budget for:
You may have a full, dedicated, in-house marketing team ready to work on your inbound efforts, or you may be a one-person team that could benefit from tapping into an agency to help you do some of the heavy lifting. Either way, it's imperative that you have a good understanding of the team you'll have on your side to carry out your inbound marketing program.
Your inbound execution will only be as good as the support you establish from the get go. Inbound is all about attracting, converting, nurturing, and delighting, but before you can do any of that, you need to have a number of things in place, such as a few great pieces of content, a solid website, and social media presence to attract those great leads, and, of course, a carefully crafted, highly strategic plan for moving forward.
This could be included as part of your foundational activities, but you'll want to make sure you have content ready to offer to your prospects when they find you. We recommend having at least one piece of content for each stage of the buyers' journey (awareness, consideration, and decision), to help attract and guide prospects whether they're at the top, middle, or bottom of the sales funnel.
Once you've laid your foundation and you're ready to start attracting, converting, and nurturing your prospects, you'll want to establish an ongoing support budget to make sure you're carrying out the important activities that will make your program a success. We usually work on a monthly timeline with our clients, as certain activities tend to repeat themselves on a monthly basis. Here are the key components we suggest including in your monthly ongoing inbound marketing activities:
Throughout your inbound program, you'll find that it's important to have some wiggle room for the "extras" that will help you in the long-run. For example, you may want to consider implementing a Service Level Agreement to ensure that the handoff of leads from marketing to sales, and the subsequent followup from your sales team, is as smooth and effective as possible. You also might find that your website is in need of a refresh to better attract those leads and tell the story you want them to hear.
As you can see, there's a lot of important parts and components to a successful, ongoing inbound marketing plan. By laying the right foundation and committing to careful planning, budgeting, and execution, you'll be able to successfully implement your ongoing inbound marketing plan.
Topics: Inbound Marketing