Member Article

What makes a good Inbound Marketing Manager? PART 2

In the first part of this two-part handbook, we covered five key elements any Inbound Marketing Manager needs to address if they want to see success: buyer personas, lead generation, management and scoring, Marketing Automation, content creation, and social media promotion.

In the second half of the Inbound Marketing Manager handbook, we’ll cover paid social, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), reporting, tools and embracing Inbound Marketing.

Paid social

If your organic social media channels are working well for you but you want to scale up your activity, paid social is something worth considering. Paid social gives you access to more advanced targeting options, from focusing on specific audience segments and job titles, to targeting a specific geographic location or type of profile. Paid social is incredibly valuable if, for example, you are a B2B organization and have already identified the companies that you want to target with your marketing activity. You can use things like Facebook Ads or LinkedIn advertising to target specific people that work at a specific company on either of these channels. Then, you can use that information to go and create content tailored for these people, improving your chances of attracting them to your website and securing new business.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Getting SEO right can have huge benefits for your business, enabling your website to rank higher on Google and attract more traffic. First and foremost, you want to decide on what keywords you should be ranking for. Remember, this needs to be focused on what potential customers would be searching for and in relation to the services/products your business provides.

Don’t pick generic or broad keyword terms; instead, conduct keyword research and analysis to identify the most relevant terms for your business. Ranking for the right keywords is key to ensuring your website attracts relevant searchers – those who are most likely to become leads or customers.

Start by searching for words or phrases related to the products or services that your business provides, then use keyword planning tools, such as Moz’s Keyword Explorer or Google AdWord’s Keyword Planner to identify the best opportunities. You shoud look for the terms that are the most relevant to your business, have search volumes, are long tail (3 or 4 words long) and preferably have low competition, as this will give you the best chance to rank quickly.

Once you have a list of keywords, you want to create website pages and blogs optimised for those specific keyword terms. The more pages you have related to specific terms relevant to your business’ products or services, the more chances you have to rank and drive traffic to your website.

Once you have done this, you can then consider a “pillar page strategy” – but the above is where you should start.

Reporting

If you are an Inbound Marketing Manager – or aspiring to become an Inbound Marketing Manager – you need to know your KPI (Key Performance Indicators) and be able to report on that information quickly and readily.

You need to be in a position where you can routinely report on web visits, landing page views, leads, opportunities and customers. Also, you need to focus on reporting on the metrics that matter – i.e. those that actually help the business, rather than reporting for the sake of it!

Remember, reporting is there to help you understand what’s working, what you can do to improve your marketing and to show your boss that your marketing activity contributes to the business’ revenue generation. Don’t just report on things like impressions, tweets or clicks, but instead on how many leads your activities generate, the quality of those leads and how many of them are sales opportunities.

Getting the right tools

The tools you use for your Inbound Marketing journey could make or break your success. As your business – and client base – grows, you’ll start needing more and more bits of technology to help support your growth and new business activity. But it’s important that all these tools work together. From your website and social media tools, to your marketing automation platform and CRM, it’s vital that each tool can work together and accurately capture the necessary information. There’s no point using a social media tool to communicate with potential prospects if your CRM can’t record that information on a contact record. Bring all your tools together under one platform so that your activity is recorded throughout your marketing operation.

Embrace Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing is great and – if done correctly – can help your business to improve its lead generation and revenue significantly. However, it’s important to appreciate the simple fact that it takes time, consistency, persistence, creativity, quality and most importantly, investment. When it comes to Inbound Marketing, resist the temptation to cut corners in order to make short-term financial gains – it’s not worth it and won’t help your business to attract prospects. Make sure you carefully consider every element of your campaign and optimise everything you do; whether it’s a tweet, blog or piece of downloadable content.

Inbound Marketing is both a strategy and an industry that is constantly evolving – make sure you, as an Inbound Marketing Manager, are evolving too!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Bob Dearsley .