When it comes to Inbound Marketing, there are several paths you can take. While there are numerous ways to promote and drive traffic to your brand, this can become a problem. There is no method that is guaranteed to work for everyone. Taking this into account, it is essential that you find the right Inbound Marketing plan for you.

Here are five steps that you can take to help create a solid foundation for your Inbound Marketing plan:

Do Your Research

Before you move on to any other the other steps, you should take the time to do some market research. While you may consider this dry work, this will give you the baseline that will inform the rest of your campaign, and give you the information you need to create a successful Inbound Marketing plan. Market research will suggest how engaged or disengaged consumers are with your product already, what they are looking for in a product similar to yours, and which social networks they use and how they use them. If you don't do your research properly, you shouldn't be surprised if you find yourself trying things out willy-nilly.

Define Your Goals

What do you hope to accomplish with your inbound marketing campaign? This may seem like a simple question, but your inbound marketing plan is a means to a specific goal, and you need to be damn sure what that is. Are you hoping to attract sales leads that lead to sales directly on your website? Are you more interested in promoting engagement in a product available in stores? Are you just starting out and want to build brand awareness? If you know what your goal is, your plan will have a better chance at succeeding.

Define Your Product/ Buyer Personas

Start with a vision in your mind, visualizing the end user of your product. Inbound Marketing depends on defining identity, and that is the key to your success. Even if you just pick a random identity, you can quickly imagine many exciting ways to promote yoru brand in a way that is consistent with what you have envisioned.

Choose Your Social Media Channels

This can be a very difficult step for some people. During this step, you must decide which social media platforms will best suit your target demographic. The previous steps should give you all the information you need to make an informed decision, allowing you to eliminate low-return media outlets that won't give you very much return on your investment.

Assess Your Campaign

The moment of truth. Throughout the execution of your marketing plans you need to use tools to analyze your metrics. This will help you keep tabs on the performance of your various efforts (i.e. blogging, landing pages, CTAs). If you find that Twitter is performing better than anticipated and Facebook is disappointing (it really is), you can take steps to resolve the situation by adjusting the content or eliminating unnecessary low performers.

ImageWorks, LLC

Follow these five steps and you will have a rough inbound marketing plan that you can analyze, assess, and execute with measurable results. Whether you have tehse steps planned out or are not entirely sure where to begin, you can always benefit from an Inbound Marketing assessment. No matter where you are in the process, it is always useful to have an extra pair of eyes.

ImageWorks, LLC provides inbound marketing services that can help you attract new leads and sell a higher number of your products and services. Contact us to receive a free assessment and get more information about how we can help improve your marketing and help you reach your target audience.