5 Easy Steps to Creating an Inbound Marketing Plan

What’s The Plan…

– When it comes to Inbound Marketing there are many roads that you can take. There are countless ways to promote and draw traffic to your brand, but therein lies the problem. There is no one method that works for everyone, and there is no guarantee that a given method will work for you.?With this taken into account, having the right Inbound Marketing plan is of paramount importance.

Here are five steps that you can take to create a surefire Inbound Marketing plan:

1. Do Your Homework

Before you do anything else, you should take the opportunity to do some market research. This will give you the baseline that will inform the rest of your campaign, and give you the information you need to create a killer Inbound Marketing plan.?Market research will tell you how engaged or disengaged?consumers already are with your product, what they are looking for in a product like yours, and which social networks they use and how they use them. If you don’t do your research, don’t be surprised if you find yourself throwing things against the wall to see what sticks.

2. Clearly State Your Goals

What do you want to accomplish with your inbound marketing campaign? This may seem like a silly question, but your Inbound Marketing plan is a road map to a specific goal, and you need to define what that is. Do you want to attract sales leads that lead to sales directly on your website. Are you more interested in promoting engagement in a product available in stores? Are you just starting out and want to build brand awareness? Knowing what your goal is can make an Inbound Marketing plan much easier.

3. Define Your Product:

You may have heard this one before: If your product was a person, who would it be? An Inbound Marketing plan is not going to get very far without an answer to that question.?Start with a picture in your mind visualizing the end user of your product.?Inbound Marketing hinges on defining identity, and this is your key to success. Even if you just pick an identity at random, such as selecting a celebrity or even a fictional person, you will quickly imagine many exciting ways to promote your brand in a way that is consistent?with what you have envisioned.

4. Chose Your Channels

This is going to be the toughest step in building your Inbound Marketing plan. You have to decide which social media sites and channels will best fit your target demographic. The previous steps will give you all the information that you need to make the right decision, allowing you to eliminate low-return media outlets that will give you a minimal return on your investment. Choose the right social media outlet and watch your product take flight.

5. Grade Your Campaign

Here is the moment of truth. Throughout the execution of your marketing plans you need to use analytic?tools to keep tabs on the performance of your various promotional efforts. If you find that Twitter is promoting better than anticipated and Facebook is disappointing, you can take steps to resolve the situation by adjusting the content or eliminating?unnecessary low performers.

Follow these five steps and you will have an Inbound Marketing plan that you can assess, analyze, and execute with measurable results. Whether you have these steps clearly planned out or are not quite sure where to begin you can always benefit from an Inbound Marketing Assessment. No matter where you are in the process, an extra pair of eyes can make all the difference.

Find out what a free Inbound Marketing Assessment can do for you:

Marketing Matters Inbound?is an inbound marketing firm specializing in online conversions, content?strategy, PPC campaigns and traditional media placement. Our experience in?B2B digital?marketing?and?traditional media?allows us to deliver results through a strategic media mix. We believe in?aligning and merging marketing and sales/operations for optimal return on your marketing investment.