8 steps to create an inbound marketing plan

As a marketer, who doesn’t want to have a great relationship with their customers, keep the leads pouring in, and have good engagement on the content? 

These things aren’t impossible to get. All you need is a well-planned inbound marketing strategy. 

Inbound marketing has proven to be a highly successful strategy for businesses seeking to attract and engage their target audience. By creating valuable content and providing relevant solutions, companies can establish their authority, build trust, and ultimately drive qualified leads. In this blog post, we will guide you through the process of creating an inbound marketing plan that will help you achieve your marketing goals and generate sustainable growth for your business.

Steps to creating an inbound marketing plan 

1. Define your audience 

The first step in creating any plan, strategy, or content is to know your audience. But why so? Understanding who you are catering to, what they like, how they communicate, etc. will help you craft your marketing plan accordingly. 

To understand your audience, you need to create buyer personas. What are buyer personas?

They are the fictional representation of your ideal customers. If your business is about women’s clothing line. Then the ideal customer would be women who are from 20-50 years old. That’s how to create a fictional representation of your audience.

But the catch is; what a 20 year old woman likes might not suit a 40 year old woman. You have to differentiate their likings, habits, preferences, etc. according to their characteristics. All representation and differentiation will help you target your ideal customer with the right content and plan. 

1. Do keyword research

The next step is to do keyword research. Perform keyword research to identify the terms and phrases your target audience uses to search for information related to your products or services. As a result, you'll be able to create content strategies that serve your audience better; in turn, you'll be able to reach more people. You can attract the right kind of audience to your channel and website.

Tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Moz Keyword Explorer can help you discover relevant keywords and their search volumes. 

Tip: Make sure to search for keywords that are highly-searched, but have low to medium competition. 

1. Define your goals

Now you have your target audience sorted and the list of keywords is prepared. The next step is to define your goals - identify what you want to achieve and what’s the timeline?

Your goal might be to generate more leads, bring traffic to your website, or to get more followers on social media. You can certainly narrow it down by assessing your current situation - checking your website, observing your social media, etc. 

1. Create a content strategy 

It is the most important part of creating any marketing plan - which content would be published, where it would be published, how many times, and in which format. 

You know your audience, the keywords they use, and the main objective behind creating an inbound marketing plan. Now you are all set to create a content strategy that suits your needs. 

In order to create content, it is equally important to know what stage you are in. Generally the stages are divided into 3 parts - awareness, evaluation, and purchase. And the content needs to be created according to the stage. You might need to push more informative content in your awareness stage, more case studies and product related content in evaluation, etc. 

The catch is that some of your audience might be in the awareness stage, whereas some might be in the purchasing stage. Keeping that in mind, you can master creating the right strategy for your business. 

1. Create a lead nurturing strategy

The ultimate idea of creating an inbound marketing plan is to get leads. To do so, you may start a newsletter, or start writing blogs, or do email marketing. It entirely depends on what suits your business. 

But getting leads and then converting them into a customer is not as easy as it looks. A lot of leads simply move down the sales funnel and become customers. But then comes those leads who hang around in the top funnel. It could be due to a lot of reasons - they might be confused about your services or want to know more about the same. So what do you do in that case?

Build a process or strategy to nurture them and bring them down the sales funnel. There are several ways to do that. Just like we mentioned earlier, you can send out emails to them, which will probably clear their doubts (if they have any) and encourage them to engage with you. 

The other way to nurture a lead is to have a conversion-focused blogging strategy. You can create a series of blog posts on the problems your audience is facing. How do you know about the problem they are facing? Keyword research will come into action here. 

Through the blog posts, you can encourage your audience to engage, access your exclusive content, and purchase your services by adding various CTAs according to your goal. You can convert the traffic into a customer by this method. 

1. Set up an inbound marketing platform

Everything from creating a strategy to planning content is done, but what about the platform where everything will be managed and tracked? 

Find a tool or platform where you can manage all your activities. There are a variety of platforms out there, such as Hubspot, Marketo, Eloqua, etc. 

You can select any one of the platforms according to your requirements, budget, and knowledge. 

1. Build a team of inbound marketing experts

What’s a plan without a team? An inbound marketing plan consists of a variety of jobs. To make it successful, you have to hire a few specialists on your team. 

From a copywriter, social media manager, email marketer, designer, ad expert, to data analysts, project managers, you will need to hire a bunch of people. But hiring also depends on your company's size and budget. 

1. Launch, measure, and analyze

Once you go live with your marketing plan, it’s crucial to keep a track on how content is performing, how many leads are generated, and what’s the response. 

Creating a process to measure your response will help you in the longer term. Check whether the strategy is working according to your predefined goals or not. Make changes wherever it is required. The goal of measuring and analyzing is to help you stay on track.

Inbound marketing strategies may initially feel like a risky endeavor and a lot of work, but the advantages it offers are unquestionable. Implementing this plan as soon as possible will allow you to start experiencing the benefits of inbound marketing sooner, such as a greater number of leads generated at a reduced cost, facilitated by a highly adaptable and scalable approach.

We have assisted more than 50 companies in accomplishing their objectives through the development of effective inbound marketing strategies. If you're interested in learning how to begin your own journey with inbound marketing, don't hesitate to get in touch with us.