Inbound Marketing: Defining your goals and strategy.

Successful inbound marketing is strategic and begins with
understanding what your audience needs and what kind of information they are
looking for.

Based on that understanding, you can produce content that
will be of value to your consumer. Don’t limit yourself to specific information
about your product or service. Sometimes tangential information can draw
visitors as well.

Once you have determined the scope of your content, you
should use a variety of methods to attract visitors to your site. With
attraction established, it becomes important to have a consistent flow of
content to keep your visitors returning for updates and new information. By
requesting their contact information in order to access content, you can begin
engaging with them more personally and directly. But let’s not get aheadof
ourselves.

Understanding where
you are.

Strategy begins with acknowledging the current situation,
defining goals and establishing action steps to achieve those goals.

To determine where you stand with your online efforts,
consider these questions:

1. What is the frequency and volume of your visitors?
2. What are the sources of your current website traffic?
3. What tools are you using to evaluate the status of your
   website? One example is the HubSpot Website Grader.
4. What is the current status of your social networks? Is your
   content integrated?
5. What interactions are occurring and what relationships are
   being established?
6. What needs to be maintained? What is not working?
7. What is your current keyword strategy for SEO? Your current
   ranking on search engine pages?
8. How would you define your current content? What is your
   process for developing and publishing it?
9. Who are the major competitive players in your market?
10. What are they doing differently? How are they perceived in
    the marketplace? How are they performing?

Evaluating your
current position and setting goals

Once you have gathered the data, answer the following
questions with concise statements and supporting information.

1. How would I rate my current content? T his will be based
   on the information that you gathered about how you currently operate, what kind
   of content you post on your website and what process you use to create it. It
   will encompass your keyword strategy, the frequency of new content and the
   perceived impact based on the traffic.
2. What are my competitors doing? Describe what your
   competitors are doing that could be giving them an edge in the marketplace.
3. What are my goals in terms of traffic, leads and
   conversion? Define feasible goals for your company based on market trends, how
   other businesses are performing in the same industry, your capital capability
   and your rate of production.

Would you like to learn more? Download our e-book,
Introduction to Inbound Marketing to get the big picture.