Inbound marketing is much talked about for the sole purpose that it is more inclusive, data-oriented and personalized. Discover these easy steps to make your organization’s marketing approach – ‘inbound’.

In 2006 Hubspot coined the word ‘inbound’ and now it is the core methodology on which modern marketing resides.

Below are the four phases:

First – you need to attract the visitor by compelling content

Second – Convert the visitor into a lead

Third – Provide them targeted information to convert them to customers, and

Fourth – Nurture them to cross sell/up sell or useful info just to retain them

So, how do we make our marketing inbound???

Step 1: Create buyer/target personas

To do this first have an audit of your social channels/website, see who is visiting and which content is keeping them engaged. Survey your current customers and leads to understanding their key issues, pain points and interests.

Step 2: Develop compelling content

Develop a content strategy based on your persona, design a content calendar. The content mix should spread across the four inbound phases – attract, convert, close and delight. Make sure to have the right CTA’s. In this same phase, do not forget to key in the high performing keywords in the content that you develop. Say in fewer words and make an easy yet powerful impact with designs that are compelling and appealing to your target audience. No one wants to waste their time unless it is an extremely worthwhile read.

Step 3: Design as per the need

The content should not be boring. The same content can be used in various formats, such as shorter blog posts, whitepapers, social cards, infographic, videos etc. One of the things that we forget is in the current world, “we have limited time”. Make a deeper impact within 6 seconds and the visitor can be yours.

Step 4: Promote your content

Develop a social media strategy and calendar to ensure that your content reached your target audience. Not only do we need to promote in the social channels, but make sure we have anemailer schedulethat goes out to the subscribers in the form of a newsletter with a pre-defined periodicity or regular blog posting in the trade websites along with the company’s website.

 Step 5: Build trust with guest posting and influencer strategy

We know that our first basic aim in inbound is to get enough relevant visitors so that we have high conversion rates. This we get if we have built enough credibility and the visitor sees our content at sites that are trustworthy or sees our posts or mention from an influencer. Recently, there was an Indian cosmetic range launch in India, and they contacted the top YouTubers from India, sponsored their stay in goa and there you go, they were known in the beauty and cosmetic fraternity within days.

Step 6: Effective optimization of pages

Most of the marketers sideline this critical step that needs to go hand-in-hand with developing and promoting content. We must optimize the pages with the high performing keywords along with clear CTA’s. Interlinking should be fewer and relevant.

Step 7: Measure the effectiveness

Measuring what has what and what hasn’t will provide the base for improvising your inbound strategy. On a macro level measure and analyze what content is performing, social channel and page analytics, which designs are being preferred.