How to Create Inbound Marketing Campaigns that Convert

Anyone can slap together an inbound marketing campaign. But a campaign that actually works? One that consistently brings in high-quality leads? That’s a challenge.

Creating inbound marketing campaigns that convert requires more planning and maintenance than just throwing everything on the wall and seeing what sticks. But high-converting marketing campaigns are also the best value for your money and work, and see the best results. 

If you want a full breakdown of how to create high-converting campaigns, check out HubSpot’s in-depth guide to creating marketing campaigns. Below are the key steps you need to follow.

Plan Your Inbound Marketing Campaign

Every great marketing campaign has to start with a clear set of goals and expectations so you can track success. Begin by setting your SMART goals. SMART goals are:

1. Specific – Your goal needs to be unambiguous and clear.
2. Measurable – You should define a concrete way of measuring progress toward your goal.
3. Attainable – It needs to be realistically achievable for your team.
4. Relevant – Your goal needs to make sense for your business and overall business goals.
5. Timely – It’s important to set a time limit on goals to keep them in check.

For each of these goals, clearly define what you’ll be tracking. It could be website traffic, form fills, social mentions or any other criteria that makes sense.

This is also when you need to clearly define your audience by creating personas. Buyer personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. They have a name, an age, a job, family, hobbies, values and fears. They are fleshed-out and fully-formed. From there, you can figure out what messages will resonate with them the most, what channels to use to reach them and (most importantly) how to convert them to a sale. For rockstar personas, use our free how-to guide.

Distributing Your Inbound Marketing Campaign

Once you know the whys of your marketing campaign, it’s time to define the whats and hows. Based on your buyer persona, you’ll want to create content that will resonate with your audience. Check out our guide for easy inbound marketing content ideas for some inspiration on what type of content to create. 

Next, decide what channels you’ll use to promote your campaign. Start by identifying which of your mediums are most successful at the moment – it could be Facebook, your blogs or Google ads. HubSpot recommends consulting the PESO model – a breakdown of various marketing channels.

The most common channels for a standard inbound marketing campaign are:

• Your highest performing social network
• Blog
• Email

Your personas and goals will influence what channels you choose, so at this stage it’s important to research to identify where your prospects are spending their time online.

Converting Customers Through Your Inbound Marketing Campaign

Converting customers is ultimately the most important step in any campaign, but also the most challenging to execute. In order to convert leads, you’ll need to use conversion assets like calls-to-action (CTAs), landing pages and lead forms.

All three of these assets work in concert. Your landing page provides a destination for visitors coming from the marketing channels defined above. Your CTA is a direct ask of an audience – this is commonly a button or line of text that stands out on the page (“Download the eBook” “Sign Up for a Free Trial”). And finally, lead forms are how you actually capture a lead’s information so you can later follow-up with emails or phone calls.

Assessing Your Inbound Marketing Campaign

Despite all your preparation, campaigns are largely a wait-and-see game. Analyzing your data after a campaign launches is vital for improving your existing campaign and knowing what to do (and what not to do) for your next campaign.

The best way to tell if your campaign “worked” is by how well it reached your initial SMART goals. If it reached your goals or exceeded them, you know it was working. If it didn’t reach your goals, you know you’ll need to go back and examine your goals as well as your tactics. 

Lastly, spend time with your team reviewing your marketing campaign. Ask yourselves questions like:

• What could’ve been done differently?
• How could we have saved money?
• For anything that went wrong, why do we think it went wrong?
• What did we learn about our audience or marketing channels?
• What kind of feedback could we gather from participants or customers?

With these tactics, you can create high-performing inbound marketing campaigns that convert. Get even more tips at our upcoming Webinar – Working Smarter, Not Harder, to Land Sales.

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Free Download: How to Run an Inbound Marketing Campaign

Are you dotting your T’s and crossing your eyes? Getting a marketing campaign off the ground is a frustrating mess of trying to pull together disconnected tools and channels. Instead of relying on notes scribbled on a thousand different notepads, use our Free Inbound Marketing Checklist to make sure you’ve covered all your bases. This download goes more in-depth into inbound marketing and everything you need to get going.

Need a new digital marketing or web design plan? We are a Minneapolis SEO, digital marketing, social media marketing, web design and HubSpot inbound marketing agency. We’re located just outside of Minneapolis. Stop on by and get started – and while you’re here, pick up a free honey stick (yes, we love our bee-related theme).