The 5 Principles of Inbound Marketing

By
Colin
– 02/09/2010Posted in: Featured, inbound marketing

The concept of Inbound Marketing as a defined tactic is still very new.  Here is my take on the principles of an effective Inbound Marketing campaign.  Feel free to chip in with your observations at the end of the post!

  1. Listen and learn

    2. Listening and learning are two of the fundamental skills one must develop in order to engage in effective Inbound Marketing.  By listening to your community you’ll not only learn about your customers (and what they think of your products), but you’ll gain valuable insight into how to create better products and services for them.

    By engaging in intelligent listening before participating in communities, you’ll also ensure that you don’t make any “newbie” mistakes, which can anger and alienate the very people you want to connect with.

  2. Create exceptional content

    3. The only way to have true success with Inbound Marketing is to create and share exceptional content.  Since Inbound Marketing is about being found by your target customers, it’s important to make sure there are ample ways for a customer to find you online.  This means that besides your corporate website, you need to be blogging, creating rich media like video and podcasts, and actively participating in social media channels.

  3. Use the right online marketing mix

    4. Inbound Marketing, as it’s defined so far, is really an umbrella term which combines Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing.  It will be important to use the right mix of these two tactics (and others) to have the best effect.  If more people in your target market use the web for search, you might want to invest more money in SEO than social media.

  4. Engage with your customers

    5. You can listen and learn, create great content and use the right mix all you want, but you’ll get nowhere if you’re not engaging with your customers.  You need to be creating the type of content that encourages discussion, or is useful to your customer in some way.  As Chris Brogan often says – “Be there before the sale.”

    How can you engage? Listen and respond to people talking about your brand or product, be helpful by answering industry related questions, comment on other people’s blogs, and consistently promote others.

  5. Analyze and measure

    6. How can you know what’s working if you’re not analyzing and measuring the results?  One of the hallmarks of any good Inbound Marketing campaign is that the execution be tied to measurable results.  Before you begin the campaign, figure out some goals you want to accomplish.  Contact form submissions, e-commerce sales, brand perception, and engagement metrics like page views, time on site, and comments are all good places to start.  Then, using a tool like Google Analytics, configure your goal pages.

What else is essential to an Inbound Marketing campaign?  What advice would you give to someone just starting to think about using Inbound Marketing tactics?

Related posts:

  1. Five Principles of Inbound Marketing Presentation
  2. How HubSpot Created an Industry: The Ultimate Inbound Marketing Case Study
  3. Six Ways Your Business Can Leverage Geolocation Marketing
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About Colin

Colin Alsheimer is an Account Supervisor for Weber Shandwick and the VP of Promotions for the Social Media Club of Dallas, among other things.