When it comes to inbound marketing plans, kicking off a new campaign can be intimidating whether you are a rookie or a seasoned player. Change yourgame by identifying the way people learn about your company online, 
align your marketing goals and create the best experience for your prospects. Whether you are planning your first campaign or brushing up on inbound basics, we have 5 must-haves to plan like a pro.
1. Clearly Defined Timeline & Goals
Before you start creating an inbound campaign, decide why you need it. What are the goals you are hoping to achieve and by what date? This is called “SMART” marketing because the goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound -- just like all good inbound campaign should be.
2. An Understanding of Buyer Personas
Personas are observed behavior patterns among your potential users and customers. Understanding your buyer persona is critical to content creation, sales follow up, and so much more. Create a template to help you understand buyer personas. Incorporate research or survey data that you have on your prospects and customers to help identify your personas.
3. Editorial / Content Calendar & CTA Plan
An editorial content calendar and call-to-action plan are shareable resources that marketing teams can use to plan. There are many benefits of using the calendar format including having the ability to view your content distribution over a set period of time. Social media, blog, website, PR content can all be included on the calendar to focus on key messages pertaining to your business and customer interests.
4. Lead Nurturing Plan
Inbound marketing is known for providing value, not high-pressured sales. Lead nurturing is about understanding the sales funnel, timing and needs. As your lead becomes more engaged in content and additional offers, start to introduce them to your product or service. Here’s an infographic that further explains the sales funnel and lead nurturing.
5. Analytics
It’s hard to keep a secret on the internet. Searches and clicks generate data that can be tracked and matter to the success of your inbound marketing campaign. Metrics including traffic, time on site, lead conversion, inbound links, clicks and more all play a role in evaluating the effectiveness of a campaign. There are many tools available to help you determine which metrics are most important for your business, campaign and ROI evaluation.
Setting clearly defined goals, understanding your potential and existing customers, creating remarkable content, nurturing prospects through the sales process and evaluating results are the keys to inbound campaign success. Now it’s time to pull your team together, create a starting lineup and develop a campaign that is a guaranteed win. We’ve created a tool to help you get started…
