Four Do’s and Don’ts for a Winning Inbound Marketing Strategy

Has your marketing team developed a true inbound marketing strategy? Are your email marketing efforts giving you the ROI you hoped for? Does your content speak to each of your buyer personas throughout their entire buyer’s journey?

If any or all of these questions speak to you, it might be time to embrace inbound marketing and consider how marketing automation platforms like Marketo or HubSpot can lead to more qualified leads, higher conversion rates and – yes – even the holy grail of increased revenue.

Today, marketers can no longer rely on traditional methods to reach prospective customers as outbound marketing efforts are increasingly being ignored by prospects. Flipping the focus to inbound marketing is how successful marketers earn their potential customer’s attention rather than demand it.

A successful inbound marketing strategy is one that adds value to your audience. Providing valuable information in the form of case studies, white papers, how-to articles and tips and tricks is key to generating awareness, education and good will before you ask for more.

There are a lot of components that lead to a successful inbound marketing strategy. To get started, here are four Do’s and Dont’s to follow:

Don’t forget the “cocktail party” rule:

In the proverbial cocktail party that is digital marketing, avoid the temptation to be the person that endlessly talks about themselves. We’ve all encountered these people at one point or another. Eventually you tune them out, formulate your exit strategy and go find someone else who will engage in a meaningful, two-way conversation with you. All too often we see digital marketing approaches that compel audiences to exit the one-sided conversation. If you are struggling to get your audience to engage with you, take a step back and see if you are following the “cocktail party” rule.

Do strive to meet the “80/20” rule: 

An antidote to avoiding the “cocktail party” situation is to follow the “80/20” rule. When it comes to your company’s inbound strategy, strive to make 80% of your content strategy about sharing non-promotional content that adds value to your audience. 20% of your content can then promote the wonderful things that set your products or services apart. Your audience will reward you by staying in the conversation and engaging with your company online instead of moving on.

Don’t be all things to all people:

Don’t miss the mark by sending the same content to everyone. Take the time to personalize your content by buyer persona. If you have a marketing automation platform, segment your audience to facilitate serving up the right content – at the right time – to the right people. Marketers who blast their prospects with generic content consistently miss the mark. And instead of converting prospects into leads, they lose their prospects all together.

Do seek to speak to your audience on a 1-to-1 basis:

The core of Marketing Automation is fostering a one-to-one conversation with your audience. Relevant and timely messaging is key to engaging with a lead based on where they are in the buyer’s journey. Blasting out the same message to everyone when it is irrelevant to most will not further your goal of converting leads into customers. Taking the one-to-one approach to messaging, combined with careful attention to analytics, will help you create meaningful and relevant conversations (and conversions!) with your emails and social media activities.

In the end, developing a sound inbound strategy should center around creating a true, valuable proposition for your audience. It will give them a reason to keep coming back to engage with you which builds their trust in your company. More engagement and trust from your audience will result in an increase in more Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) to turn over to your awesome sales team so they can convert them into happy customers. Ideally, these customers will become brand advocates promoting your company’s products or services to others.

Even if you don’t have marketing automation software yet, you can still incorporate these core principles into your company’s inbound strategy. When you’re ready to take your inbound efforts to the next level with marketing automation software, Mambo Media’s certified marketing automation specialists can help you assess your marketing automation readiness and guide you from there.