If you're new to inbound marketing, you've got a long road ahead of you. But you'll start seeing results in no time if you follow a well thought-out strategy since day one.

With inbound marketing, you’re attracting people to you rather than you seeking leads. Through this simple definition, execution requires some time and study. Going about an inbound marketing campaign also has to build a good foundation to launch on the right foot.

So what steps should you take first to assure a successful start? Here are some things to keep in mind to assure you don’t make mistakes.

Understanding Your Audience

Before you do anything, take some time to create customer personas so you thoroughly understand the pain points of your demographic. The more you know about your leads, the better you target what those people really want.

What you think those leads want is probably different from what you initially thought. Once you start studying metrics about their habits and lifestyle choices, you’ll find a lot of eye-opening facts.

Once you understand your audience, the next step is to think of ways in which you can solve their challenges with your products or services. Take a look at these key resources to help you plan and measure your next inbound marketing campaign.

Setting Your Campaign Goals

Take some time to plan what benchmarks you want to set so you have more focus on your campaign. Set goals that are:

Specific: clearly communicate expectations, parties involved and address any existing constraints.
Measurable: define the criteria for measuring your progress.
Attainable: set goals that are realistic and possible for your team to reach.
Realistic: set goals that are relevant to your business.
Time-based: set an expected date of completion.

For example, your goals may be focused on the number of visits, contacts, or customers for the next year, quarter, or month.

You should address other challenges like who’s responsible for the campaign and what you hope to attain. Get it all in writing and make sure everyone involved understands their roles.

Developing The Keywords You’ll Use in Your Content

Keywords are the words typed into search engines which represent the topics that searchers are trying to learn more about. In order to attract visitors to your content, you need to do research to figure out which keywords relate to your business and your industry.

You need to make the keywords naturally flow into your content without excessive use. Use these keywords in your URL, title tags, meta descriptions, and the main body of your content.

With an increasing number of people using voice commands for searches, you should also think of keywords that use a conversational tone.

Choose the Content You Want to Create

Once you understand the needs of your audience and how they consume information online, start to create content that will answer their pain points and needs across the different stages of their customer journey.

Consider what are the most effective ways to present your content. You may use blog posts, videos or infographics, depending on the preferences of your audience and where they are on their journey towards becoming customers. The content you create doesn’t necessarily have to mean being serious. Your targeted demographic may prefer a humorous touch while still addressing their problems and the solution you’re offering.

Don’t forget to think about how you will distribute your content and how much budget you will allocate to paid advertising. Paid content distribution should not be your main focus, but should instead serve as a means for directing audiences to your owned media. For this to work, your owned content has to be captivating, entertaining, relevant, and add value to your audience.

Contact us at Calibrate Digital Marketing to use our digital marketing expertise to help you through your inbound marketing journey.