Inbound marketing is not simply a copy-and-paste, one-size-fits-all way to generate business. Rather, it requires customization and specification depending on factors like your industry and target audience. This calls for careful planning, thoroughly-researched decisions, and laser-focused strategies. Helping clients navigate these kinds of decisions is at the heart of what I do each day.
Yes, I’ll create landing pages or segmented email blasts for many of my clients, but marketing is about a lot more than just page building. Knowing what to put on a landing page or knowing how to segment your audience is a skill that has taken time to develop. It’s never a perfect science, but we learn more and more about your leads and customers every time we work under the inbound marketing umbrella. We can ultimately use this information to refine and adjust our methods.
The data and knowledge you collect about your audience are specific to your brand, and this information can’t be replicated from business to business. The content you create and the perspective you have about your industry should be unique—it's what sets your brand apart. This idea is the same for how to approach marketing your business as well.
What does this look like in the real world? Here are a couple of examples from two of my clients— both of whom offer similar services but in different industries:
Working with the first client, the starting lead database was small. It took time and lots of content marketing to build their database into a sustainable business. With the second client, the initial lead list was huge, so we took a different marketing approach. We chose to focus not on content marketing (that came next) but instead on re-engaging the contacts on their lead list to get a few sales on the books.
Marketing is personal. These clients required different strategies because they were in two different places in development.
One of the primary goals of another client was to have customers engage with the brand via text messaging, given their industry, so SMS marketing was part of their individualized initial strategy. What we discovered was SMS-based marketing wasn't the way to get leads to engage through texting for them. While SMS messages still go out on occasion, it’s actually email marketing and social media that have the biggest impact for this brand, and it's where we put most of our focus today. We learned from our efforts and fine-tuned our strategies.
These are just a couple of examples of how your inbound marketing strategy needs to be tailored for your business and your unique goals. Essentially, that’s what an inbound marketing consultant does.
I empower businesses and marketers to create automated content systems that elevate sales and delight customers. Here’s how it works.
