The 5 Principles of 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!

Lis­ten and learn

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.

Cre­ate excep­tional content

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.

Use the right online mar­ket­ing mix

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.

Engage with your customers

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.

Ana­lyze and measure

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. The Sin­gle Most Effec­tive Tac­tic For Online Mar­ket­ing Success