Creating a basic inbound marketing plan is often overlooked by the small business owner for any number of reasons, but this step helps with thinking about desired outcome as well as resource requirements.
Before talking about tactics, the plan needs to address some basic questions that will help create a framework for later decision making.
The questions that need to be asked and answered are:
- What are the business goals that I’m trying to achieve?
- Who is the target audience that I’m trying to reach?
- What makes what I do unique?
- How much time can I spend on this activity?
- How much money can I spend on this activity?
Business Goals
In most cases, the ultimate business goal is to increase revenue while reducing expenses, and thereby, maximizing profit. You increase revenue by getting new customers or by getting existing customers to spend more with you (or you have some kind of sponsorship deals in place, but let’s ignore that model for now).
Each of these is a business goal that requires a focused marketing effort to accomplish whether it’s by creating a specific offer, bundling products a certain way, adjusting pricing, or launching new products.
So first, pick just one thing you want your inbound marketing activity to accomplish for your business.
Target Audience
In the U.S., 77% of the population is online. That’s equivalent to 240 million people so there is a very good chance that your customer or someone who can influence your customer is online. People can do a number of things when they’re online:
- Search for stuff
- Read content
- Watch videos
- Play games
- Download things
- Listen to music
- Buy things
- Interact with others
Your target customer goes online and does one or more of these things. So you need to ask yourself: “who is my target customer, and what do they do online?”
Look at your current customers and create a profile of the “ideal” customer: one who either meets or exceeds your target average revenue per customer, or one who is a great source of referrals. They may not necessarily be the same.
Next, ask them what they do online. This will give you some data around how you can get your message in front of other others who have the potential to become one of your customers. This information is extremely valuable when considering the different inbound marketing tactics that you can use to reach potential customers with your message.
Uniquely You
I think this is hard for most business owners and companies. How do you provide a product or service in a crowded market in a way that’s unique and interesting to people? Unless you’ve invented a new product or a new way of doing something that no one else has done before, there are going to be a number of companies that are in the same business as you.
But, there are two things that every business has that makes them completely unique from any other business in the world:
- Its people
- Its processes
There is still some challenge in making what you do absolutely unique because it’s easy to copy others, but no one has your same background, experience, or relationships. Think about how you can communicate these points to your audience. You may have to help them understand why they should care as well, but taking the time to do this helps you to further distinguish yourself from others.
Time Constraints
Everyone has time constraints, and it’s the one resource that can never be replenished. This makes time extremely valuable.
Whether you plan to implement your inbound marketing activity yourself or you plan to work with someone, some amount of your time will always be required because you know your business better than anyone else. You subject matter expertise will serve as the primary source for the message that you distribute to your target audience.
You can manage the amount of time required by working with a marketing services provider that can help plan and execute your marketing message. Your time will still be required to provide content, but you will not have to spend time learning tools and dealing with technology. The trade-off here is money.
Money Constraints
Unlike time, there is always the possibility to make more money. You can’t buy time, but you can buy money. Coming up and implementing a plan that allows you spend money to make more money is ultimately what you’re trying to achieve with your inbound marketing activity.
Businesses of all sizes have money constraints, but you should be able to figure out the optimal blend of investing time AND money to grow your business. In most cases, inbound marketing can create awareness and interest in your products and services, but it’s not going to close business and convert leads to customers.
That’s your job, and where you should spend most of your business development time. Outside of business development, the rest of your time is spent servicing your customers.
If you can free up more of your time to close business and service customers, then it is worth investing some amount to create an inbound marketing process that reaches a target audience online with your unique message.
Thinking about and coming up with an approach for these five areas will get you ready to move on to the next step of the 6 Step Inbound Marketing Process – Design.
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