The Step-By-Step Guide to Minneapolis Inbound Marketing

Are you new to inbound marketing and feeling a bit over your head? Take a few deep breaths. Getting started with inbound marketing in Minneapolis can feel daunting, but with this step-by-step guide you’ll master inbound in no time.

1. Set SMART Goals

If you don’t know what you’re marketing toward, it’s pointless to pour resources into inbound marketing. Before you set off on your journey, make sure you set some SMART goals. SMART goals are:

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

With these criteria, you can go beyond a vague idea to something more solid. By setting SMART goals, you can most effectively track your success and ROI. An example SMART goal is: “We want to see at least 10 downloads of our eBook each month.” 

2. Create Buyer Personas

Now that you know what you want to achieve, it’s important to know who exactly you want to reach. Buyer personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. The strongest buyer personas are based on market research as well as on insights you gather from your actual customer base (through surveys, interviews, etc.). If you’re new to personas, aim for 3-5 to have a solid foundation. For rockstar personas, use our free how-to guide.

3. Keyword Research

Armed with your goals and ideal customer in mind, it’s time to start getting into the specifics of your Minneapolis inbound marketing campaign. Keywords are the vehicle to getting your website found online. What would your ideal customer search for online to find you? For BizzyWeb, it’s phrases like “web design Minneapolis” or “what is inbound marketing.” Keyword research is an involved but important process in your marketing strategy – check out our full guide to keyword research to get started.

4. Create Assets

In marketing lingo, “assets” are the actual content offers you’ll use in your marketing to draw people in. This can be blog posts, online ads, social media images, emails, etc. For inbound marketing, you’ll want to take what you learned in steps 1-3 to create valuable content to build a campaign around. This could be an eBook, an online quiz, a checklist, a template, even a game – whatever it is, it should be built with your personas in mind.

5. Set it Live

Once you have the meat of your inbound marketing strategy ready to go, it’s time to put it into action to start getting found in Minneapolis. It’s time to turn on your advertising, set up automation and plan and schedule content pieces. During this stage, it’s vital to map out all your content beforehand and make sure it’s all working together. That’s where a marketing tool like HubSpot comes in. Streamline all your content assets into clear pathways that lead your personas to your end goals.

6. Analyze

When your inbound marketing is live, it’s important to treat it like a living creature. Make sure to consistently monitor your performance and adapt your strategy as needed. No matter how much research you do, you’ll still have to adapt once your content is out in the wild. You may find that people aren’t clicking on buttons or that blogs you didn’t think would see much engagement are runaway successes. Once you have your initial data, follow steps 3-6 again with your discoveries.

With this step-by-step guide, you’re on your way to getting results with your inbound marketing in Minneapolis.

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Free Checklist: 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.

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).