Ready for inbound marketing? Make sure you do these 5 things

Television commercials and radio ads are interruption-based marketing tactics. While these tactics may have a time and place, online data has made it easier to do more tailored and cost-effective marketing through inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing is education-based and focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content in order to attract and retain a clearly defined audience.

So what does inbound marketing entail? Here are five things all inbound marketing plans should account for.

Understand your buyer personas.

For successful inbound marketing, you need to understand who your prospective buyer is. You need to have a clear understanding of his or her unique wants, needs and problems, so that can you provide solutions through strategic, targeted content.

Know your sales funnel and the cycle of your buyers.

Gone are the days of creating one piece of content and pushing it to the masses. Inbound marketing is centered on tailored content. Consider, for instance, a college that is marketing to prospective students in high school. Its message to sophomores who are just starting to consider colleges would be much different than its message to students who were accepted, but hadn’t made a final decision.

Create a plan for how to engage/educate buyers at different stages of the cycle. Once you have a solid understanding of your sales funnel and life cycle of your buyer, think about the messages that should go out to prospects at every phase of the cycle. How do you deliver that message? When do you deliver it?

Consult with experts.

While data is an important tool in inbound marketing, it can be overwhelming or downright intimidating to a novice inbound marketer. Working with experts who understand this process, you can create a sophisticated inbound marketing plan that includes common-sense remarketing campaigns, among other tailored campaigns.

Create top-notch content.

Once you have your plan in place and your experts on board, it’s time to create the content. Whether it’s blog posts, landing pages, email campaigns, ads or videos, the content should never lose sight of the first two items on this list.

If you’re ready to begin your inbound marketing journey, let Axia Public Relations help you. Axia strives to maximize its clients’ ROI by improving the inbound marketing strategies they use to achieve their business objectives. Download Axia’s e-book Maximizing Your Public Relations Investment to take your inbound marketing strategy to the next level.

Julie Miller is a marketing and communications professional with more than seven years of experience in the industry. She specializes in technology, digital marketing and communications. Julie has worked for Axia Public Relations since November 2015. Connect with Axia on Twitter @axiapr or tell us what you think in the comments below.