Inbound Marketing – Who's on your team in 2015?

To start off 2015 you and your business has decided to establish inbound marketing techniques in the business. The great news is that Inbound marketing may be one of the most cost effective ways to market your business, gone are the days of mass flyer drops and standing in exhibition hall after exhibition hall trying to attract leads. But before you consider doing all the work yourself, you must know that inbound marketing takes a lot of time, patience, and effort before it really pays off.

If you run  a small to medium-sized business, you need at least four people to handle the most important facets of your marketing campaigns: the writer, the designer, the analyst, and the team leader to produce a well oiled inbound marketing machine. 

The Writer

If you have done your research you know what an important cog in the process having high quality content is to the inbound marketing machine. 

Without good writing, your audience will struggle to benefit from your content in your blogs, landing pages and website. The writer in your inbound marketing team needs to fully understand your brand and have a voice that leaves a lasting impression on your buyer persona's. This will ensure that your prospects continue to move through the buyers journey and keep coming back to your business. 

The writer on your team should be relatively versatile in the content that they can produce. They need to be able to write blog posts, email messages, social media posts, and ebooks. You should also look for those who are naturally curious and resourceful, and will do whatever it takes to learn and seek out accurate information about the topics they’re writing about.

The Designer

If your website is designed poorly, visitors aren’t going to stick around, and they won’t be interested in learning more about your products and services -- which are factors that will result in little to no conversion. Having a poorly designed website will also have a massive impact on your brand awareness. A good way to understand this is by imagining your website as your store window in the high street. Customers will only walk into the store if they: 

a) See what they like in the window 

b) The store looks inviting, accessible and trustworthy  

c) Has an offer that attracts the customer

The same principles apply to a website. It needs to be designed to attract your target market into finding out more. The website needs to reflect your brand and give the customer the feeling of trust.

Plus your website design needs to have attractive offers such a guides, e-books and blogs.

Your web designer needs to have a full understanding of how people interact with websites and the steps prospects take in order to turn that prospect into a conversion. Not only does your website designer need to understand how humans interact whilst online, they also need to understand how search engines interact with a website.  To find out more about SEO on your website please see these blog articles written by JDR's expect SEO team: https://blog.jdrgroup.co.uk/digital-prosperity-blog/topic/inbound-marketing-seo-ppc-social-media-video

The Analyst

How will you know how well your marketing campaign is doing if you don’t have an analyst? A great analyst will be able to dissect your entire marketing campaign and pinpoint the areas that are doing well, as well as the areas that need further work. The analyst in the team also needs to be able to understand the trends and figures that areas of an inbound marketing campaign will be able to show.  An analyst also has the insight to make sound recommendations based on factual data. An inbound marketing team without an analyst is an inbound marketing team that is flying blind.

The Team Leader

Every team needs a leader to keep business in check and to stay on top of making sure things are completed in a timely, efficient manner. A great team leader will fully understand a brand and its target audience, and will be able to provide insight as to how more web traffic, landing page conversions and leads can be generated from your website and inbound marketing efforts. A team leader should also have the versatility needed to work and connect regularly with the sales team, to ensure leads are converted into sales. This will ensure that the buyers journey is completed and your customers turn into promoters of your business. 

As you can tell, inbound marketing is a team effort and needs to function efficiently to boost your leads, enquiries and sales process. Apply it to any Internet marketing channel or platform and you will notice huge differences in conversion rates, giving you competitive advantage in a changing business world.

Article by Dale Bonser