Your inbound marketing plan should be centered around creating and promoting content that your target persona wants, not what you want to write about. It is about using your expertise to answer their questions. The plan is not to produce a brochures, improve branding, make a cool logo etc.- inbound marketing is about being helpful when they want it, how they want it. It is not about pushing product but providing helpful information - information about pricing, delivery, competitive options, ROI, potential threats, areas for improvement, and just about anything else your target persona says they need to make a buying decision.
Think about the kind of content your ideal persona really wants to consume. Are long technical documents better than a quick videos and infographics? Are feature dumps more convincing than case studies? Are stories about your awards and internal company doings more convincing than in depth industry analysis? Your filter needs to be "does the client care", not "does this make the President of our company happy?"
In the end, your content can be judged by a simple test - Does your persona ask questions that this content answers?
The answer should obviously be yes. Content is created for real people with real issues. The personas that you create are important because they allow you to clearly identify who your content should be speaking to, their issues/problems, and their needs. When you create content, then, it directed by/for a particular persona.
Answer your personas questions with your content and you will have content that helps you meet your business goals. I have been coaching (begging sometimes) my clients to just note the questions prospects ask on the phone or via email during the sales process. If we know the actual questions that actual prospects are asking, we have the basis for a great content creation plan.
Beyond just content creation strategy, the other main components of the inbound marketing strategy plan are:
- Tools and Resources - software and the time and people (internal and external) you need to execute the plan
- SEO - how you position the content to get found
- Blogging - stat # 4 those that publish 15 new articles/month generate 5 times the leads of those that only publish 1
- Conversion Tools - calls to action, landing pages, and thank you pages - Stat 4 -those with 40 landing pages generate 6X the leads of those with 10 or less
- Promotion - social media, connecting with influencers and connecting with other people's audiences
- Email and Lead Nurturing - once connected staying engaged and helpful
- CRM - manage the conversations
- Analytics and Closed Loop Reporting (you can know the path customers used on online and actually calculate marketing ROI)
Much more on these topics to follow.
Topics: Marketing
