If you're an inbound marketer, you're probably developing new marketing campaigns regularly. You may even have so many running at once that you start to wonder if you remembered everything. Sometimes, you might even wonder what the goal of a campaign originally was.
However, inbound marketing must have a primary position in your marketing toolbox in our digital-first era. It has a critical role to play in reducing customer acquisition costs, improving ROI, and engaging customers in ways they appreciate. In fact, inbound marketing strategies yield an average of 54 percent more leads than their outbound counterparts.
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The Ultimate Guide to Inbound
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It's OK if you get overwhelmed at times, but that may cause you to overlook an important stage in your campaign. That's why it's beneficial to go through a quick checklist before launching a new campaign.
The next time you catch yourself feeling overwhelmed in your inbound marketing efforts, take a moment to look at this article and use its recommendations to set your campaign up for success. We’ll answer questions like, “What is inbound marketing?” and explain how it can help your business.
Five Stages of an Inbound Marketing Campaign
BigCommerce defines inbound marketing campaigns as "concentrated efforts that align all of your marketing channels around a single message and goal."
Begin by considering what your brand has to offer. What marketing channels are you using to promote your products or services? Are you offering something of value that's relevant to your audience?
As you ponder these questions, be sure to think about the five stages of running a successful inbound marketing campaign:
- Figure out your offer.
- Establish goals and benchmarks.
- Select marketing channels and start driving traffic.
- Nurture your leads.
- Measure your results.
Figure Out Your Offer
A strong inbound marketing campaign is built on a variety of offers. You can drive conversions by creating several pieces of valuable content.
We recommend developing three to five offers at first. They can be adjusted as needed. When creating these offers, remember to keep them not only relevant to your audience but consistent with your brand.
Some of the most common conversion-driven offers feature advanced content, such as:
- eBooks
- How-to guides
- Case studies
- Tip sheets
- Webinars
- White papers
We also recommend incorporating some interactive material. A few great ways to get started with this type of content include:
- Quizzes
- Calculators
- Personalized video
These offers help drive prospects through the funnel and ultimately convert them. Although each offer has its own unique value, using them together to support a unified theme will result in a more effective inbound marketing campaign.
To efficiently handle different campaign components, you’ll want to incorporate some powerful tools, like Canva for design or HubSpot for campaign management.
Remember, every campaign should be based on offers that support each other and align with your marketing goals.
Establish Goals and Benchmarks
Set goals based on the current state of your business and its future potential. Don't choose goals that you’re unlikely to achieve. Instead, make sure the goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.
New goals should also align with your company’s wider objectives. Know the reputation you want to build, how you want to engage with customers, and where you want to move the needle most. For example, you might aim to increase sales or add more satisfied buyers to your customer base.
For example, let's say we just launched a HubSpot extension. We're looking to generate activity around the topic on social media so that we can gather leads and establish ourselves as experts.
Examples of SMART goals for this project could be:
- Generate 1,000 leads who are interested in the HubSpot extension by March 1st.
- Boost our Google search ranking for the keyword "HubSpot extension" from 9th to 3rd by April 1st.
In addition, setting up benchmarks helps you understand the current state of your business and what you wish to accomplish in the long run. Common benchmarking considerations include quality, time, and cost.
Once you establish benchmarks, your goals are easier to achieve because they are clearly defined.
You will also find that benchmarks can help you set goals. For example, you might track your historical performance on HubSpot or Google Analytics and then set a goal that identifies exactly how you want to improve that performance.
Select Marketing Channels and Start Driving Traffic
Kickstart your campaign by selecting the best promotional channels for your inbound content marketing. One channel may work better than another, and that's fine! Change up your inbound marketing strategies to see what works well for your business.
Launch your next offer by sending an introductory email message to a strategic list that includes people who would be interested in this offer or content. For more information on how to generate revenue through this channel, refer to our email marketing guide.
Blog Posts
When it comes to blogging, we recommend allotting a certain number of blog entries to each topic that your campaign covers. Don't forget to add internal links to offers where appropriate, and keep track of how much traffic each post receives.
For more insights on inbound eCommerce SEO as a marketing channel, we've shared some blogging tips to help engage your customers.
Social Media
Social media users are endlessly scrolling regardless of the platform. So, this is where you should show your creativity!
Stand out from the competition by posting webinar teasers and sneak-peek footage. Engage with social media users by joining conversations on forums and responding to any questions or comments they may have.
Social platforms like TikTok have grown immensely in recent years, and the video format provides a great way for you to demonstrate your creativity. Instagram Reels offer another way to add video to your inbound strategies and stay in contact with your target audience.
Incorporating influencers into your campaigns can also broaden your reach. Working with people whose audiences align with your brand will enable you to tap into their following. Since their followers already trust you, their collaboration helps build your reputation as well.
Be sure that you're following these social media branding tips to complement your effective strategy.
Pay-Per-Click Ads
In addition to driving traffic through organic search rankings, we recommend using paid search ads to help send traffic to your offers. To learn how an eCommerce company used paid advertising to boost transactions by 32 percent, see our case study.
Pay-per-click (PPC) ads can drive traffic from a variety of sources. Remember to turn tracking on so that you can monitor how much the PPC ads contribute to your advertising campaign.
You can use modern tools to help you schedule and automate your marketing efforts. This helps you maintain greater consistency across different platforms and get the right message to the correct audience at the right time.
Nurture Your Leads
If someone converts on one of your offers, that's great. However, it doesn't always mean that they're ready to make a purchasing decision. Take this opportunity to nurture your lead through the funnel so that they can arrive at that final decision.
Walk them through the conversion funnel by attaching a lead nurturing campaign or series of relevant follow-up emails to your offer. In a lead nurturing series, each email message acts as a helpful nudge to move a lead toward the next step in the decision process.
To help you nurture people through the conversion funnel, we recommend you look into using dynamic email content and multi-step workflows. These methods ensure that shoppers receive different messages depending on their behavior. They enhance engagement by delivering precisely the right content at the right time. You can segment your email lists based on lead demographics, using characteristics such as budget, age, or geographic area. This improves the relevance of your messages, so readers are more likely to pay attention.
We also recommend integrating SMS marketing. People carry their phones with them all the time, making this an excellent way to contact leads. To increase sales, be sure to highlight the promotions or information most likely to interest your company’s audience.
Measure Your Results
Once a campaign has ended, it’s time to check your reports and measure the success of your efforts. If you're a HubSpot customer, you can easily organize and evaluate all of your campaigns.
You’ll see how many visits, contacts, and customers your campaign generated while learning how each promotion channel contributed to these outcomes. We also recommend tracking data such as the customer lifetime value (CLTV) and cost per lead (CPL). Both can help you better understand how marketing campaigns benefit your business.
Check out this screenshot of HubSpot's report on a company’s marketing results:
In addition, if you've set up your tracking URLs properly in Google Analytics, you can see how many visits your campaign generated in acquisition. Sign in to Google Analytics and select “Acquisition.” Next, click on “Campaigns” to see your campaign traffic.
Many businesses also find it helpful to use tools like Google Data Studio or Tableau to visualize campaign performance. Visualization can make it easier for your team to digest the information.
As you track performance data, it also helps to use A/B testing to improve your site content. A/B testing lets you test different versions of your design, CTA, or other important site elements to see which version produces the best results. This allows you to continually adjust and improve your website to maximize lead engagement.
Trends in Inbound Marketing Campaigns (2024)
As technology becomes more powerful, businesses have seen the rise of various new types of marketing campaigns that can engage customers and build relationships. Here are three powerful trends that you may want to incorporate:
Conversational marketing: Things like chatbots and live-chat systems allow brands to communicate with shoppers on a more personal level. They let you interact with customers and leads in real time, immediately providing answers to their questions. This encourages them to see your brand favorably and consider making purchases.
Streamlined inbound content marketing: Since businesses need to produce large amounts of content for every step of the buyer’s journey, incorporating AI tools like Jasper or ChatGPT can help make this process more efficient. These tools can start the content creation process before businesses edit and add to the material to keep it on-brand and valuable for the reader.
Privacy compliance: Increasingly strict privacy regulations mean that businesses must focus on using zero-party data when personalizing inbound efforts. Collecting voluntary customer information, creating adaptable websites that adjust based on user behavior, and segmenting emails can also help provide valuable personalization without data tracking.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid in Inbound eCommerce
As you implement these effective inbound strategies, you’ll want to be aware of common pitfalls that might hinder your inbound marketing efforts.
Two of the most common mistakes involve overloading campaigns with numerous offers and neglecting mobile optimization. Too many offers can result in fewer clicks because of decision paralysis. Instead, concentrate on presenting leads with a clear next step. When people access your site on mobile devices, you also want to make sure they don't encounter any obstacles to engaging with your page. Many users will quickly go elsewhere if they have difficulty.
To avoid these common pitfalls, keep the following tips in mind:
- First, focus on providing user-friendly landing pages. They should be easy to navigate and understand on any device.
- Know exactly what you want people to do after engaging with your content.
- Write clear CTAs that let people know precisely what action to take.
- Keep your target audience in mind when creating new material. This will help make the content engaging, interesting, and clear.
Conclusion
We hope this article has helped you better understand the five critical stages of an inbound marketing campaign. To recap, it all begins with your offer.
Look at how many people sign up or download content, and check your analytics to see the number of customers you gain. And don't forget to check in on your benchmarks. If an offer isn't meeting your expectations, consider redirecting your efforts.
When it comes to selecting a marketing channel, look for click-throughs to your offers, social sharing (such as retweets or likes), and conversions. We recommend taking a look at the click-through rate (CTR) for your lead nurturing campaign. If the CTR is less than 5 percent, your offer may not be getting enough traction.
Finally, take a look at the new leads, total submissions, and new customers that resulted from your campaign. Determine if you have achieved your goal, and identify what you can improve in the future.
There you have it! You’re on the right track to developing your very own successful inbound marketing campaign. If you have any questions or concerns, contact us today. Our team at Groove Commerce has the experience needed to help you design a highly effective campaign. You can get started with an audit so that you know how your site could improve. We’ll help you create a campaign strategy that will grow your business moving forward. Explore our BigCommerce and Shopify SEO services to learn more about how we can help you excel.
