6 Steps for a Flawless Inbound Marketing Strategy – The HubSpot Way

“These days, people want to learn before they buy, be educated instead of pitched.” – Brian Clark

Our customers, these days, are smarter and more informed than ever. They can sense a sales pitch from a country mile, and they absolutely despise it. They don’t want to be sold to, they want to know why you’re better than your competitors for something that they already have a need for. The trick is to know the “what, when, and how” of the sweet spot that would make people engage with your brand, even if they don’t immediately buy. First thing’s first, you’ve got to cut ties with cold calling and emailing, and adopt Inbound Marketing. Let’s quickly touch base on how to ace it. Shall we?

What is Inbound Marketing?

The art of “charming-engaging-bowling over” your customers through relevant content that resonates most with them is what inbound marketing is all about. This methodology creates delightful experiences, builds trust, and grows business. Layer this methodology on top of the HubSpot software and you’d witness a prospect turn into a customer and then advocate for your brand.

How to Become a HubSpot Inbound Marketing Wizard?

There are, essentially, 6 steps, for a flawless inbound marketing strategy – the HubSpot way:

1. Meticulous Persona Definition: It’s essential to get a clear understanding of what charms your prospects into giving you their undivided attention. Clear and explicit persona definition can get you half-way there. HubSpot possesses an incredible, intuitive, and free tool called ‘Make My Persona’ that helps marketers create well-defined and elaborated personas to power through perceptive campaigns. Personas focus on the needs, interests, and challenges of your target audience, so that your campaign content is more specific and relatable.

2. Pertinent Content Creation: Once you’re done with persona definition, you’d surely know your audience better to determine the kind of content that would attract them to your website. These could be blog posts, eBooks, whitepapers, webinars, podcasts, vlogs, what have you. You may feel that you’re in the midst of ‘Darwin’s survival of the fittest’ kind of a pickle, but if you get step 1 right, your content getting your prospect’s attention is highly plausible.

3. Superlative Email Marketing: The best way to keep your existing customers engaged while gaining traction with potential leads is email marketing, especially considering our increasingly digital landscape. It’s the best means to promote your new content pieces to the people who have opted in to receive your email communication and send tailor-made content to specific, targeted contact lists helping them progress through the sales funnel.

4. Unimpaired Lead Nurture Program Set-Up: Marketing automation has blessed our lives with a fantastic functionality called Lead Nurture Programs and HubSpot’s Lead Scoring Tool makes it even easier. If you manage to build seamless lead nurture workflows that promote your content via email marketing, it eases the burden on sales folks as they receive warmer leads and can save their aggressive streak for new acquisitions. It works in favor of both the prospects and the sales team since it eliminates cold calling and incorporates contextual marketing.

5. Impeccable Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Day in and day out, marketers hear that content is king, but what good is it without a search engine optimization strategy. You’d definitely want this content to be found organically, as well. HubSpot enables you to look at your visibility across a topic, and not to a distinct keyword. It follows the ‘topic cluster’ model, where you’re able to capture a large amount of traffic across the incessant plethora of relevant keywords. HubSpot also empowers you with a ‘Content Strategy Tool’ which makes SEO easier than ever.

6. Error-Free Analytics Reporting: Eliminating assumptions is where the beauty of measuring and analyzing your inbound campaigns lies. It seems like a daunting task, but once you get the hang of it, you wouldn’t let it go. It helps you measure every inch of your marketing funnel, be it TOFU (top-of-the-funnel) marketing activities like SEO, blogging, social media or MOFU (middle-of-the-funnel) activities like email marketing and lead nurturing. Determine the tools you’d like to use to report the progress of these metrics and the success of your KPIs, and make informed and intelligible decisions for future spend and effort.

It’s imperative to know that the customer is, in fact, at the center of inbound marketing. You’ve got to take a leap of faith in the fact that what’s best for the customer is, ultimately, best for you. HubSpot has the built-in tools to help you translate your customer equations into relationships, and not transactions. Now, go ahead, get started on your inbound marketing strategy to “charm-pitch-sell-bowl over” your customers – the HubSpot Way!

Are you a HubSpot Inbound Marketing wizard?