As we’re getting ready to go into 2011, I think it’s important for business owners to make sure they have a solid inbound marketing plan in place. If you don’t have one already, here is what you want to make sure you include:
- Purpose of the inbound marketing activity
- 2011 business objectives
- Monthly goals for website visitors, leads, and sales
- Target market definition
- Description of buyer personas
- Keyword phrases and prioritization
- Ideas for blog topics and social media updates
- Editorial calendar
- Description of compelling offers
Let’s look into each of these in a little more detail to better understand what each means.
Purpose of the inbound marketing activity
Briefly state why the inbound marketing activity will be undertaken and what is the desired outcome.
2011 business objectives
List your business objectives as specific as possible including revenue targets, customer acquisition numbers, and customer retention numbers.
Monthly goals for website visitors, leads, and sales
Using output from the inbound marketing calculator, indicate monthly numbers for website visitors and conversion rates to arrive at monthly number of leads and number of sales.
Target market definition
Clearly define your target market from where you will acquire your clients. This should include size of market, type of customer, and description of the problem you are trying to solve.
Identify competitors
Include name, website, and description of relevant competitors, especially ones who appear on page 1 of Google for your target keyword phrases.
Description of buyer personas
Unlike a target market, buyer personas describe the specific type of people who will buy your product or service. Clearly identifying your buyer personas will help you communicate more effectively with your individual buyers in a language that is best suited to them.
Keyword phrases and prioritization
Keyword phrases are the combinations of keywords for which you want to be found on page 1 of Google. There are various degrees of competitiveness for keywords and you want to prioritize across getting visibility for highly competitive keywords, moderately competitive keywords, and less competitive keywords.
The competitiveness of keywords is determined by the amount of search volume. Much like applying to college, it’s important to target a set of keywords that are within your reach, a few keywords that are a little beyond your reach, and a few keywords that are well within your reach and act as a safety net.
Ideas for blog topics and social media updates
Write down ideas for different types of blog posting and social media updates that you can produce on a regular basis. Try to mix in everyday topics that will be easy to produce as well as more involved topics that will require more planning and research.
Besides using social media to announce new blog postings to your followers, describe other ways that you can provide insight, information, and value to your social media followers.
Editorial calendar
A calendar will help you plan when you should focus on producing content for different topics and will help you align where and when you need to be targeting your message.
Initially, you will need to create top of funnel content to speak to early stage prospects, but you will eventually need content that speaks to middle of the funnel prospects as well as prospects who are ready to buy. Each step of your funnel will require specific messaging and planning is essential to help you prioritize resources.
Description of compelling offers
Along with ongoing blog content, you will need to create relevant offers and clear call to action to get visitors to engage with you. Compelling offers may include ebooks, calculators, templates, webinars, or kits.
You’ll need to align the creation of these compelling offers with the editorial calendar so you can prepare ahead of time. Some offers will require more preparation than others.
Your inbound marketing plan will help keep you on course so you can reach your business goals in 2011. Refer to it regularly and update as needed to help make your inbound marketing efforts more effective throughout the year.
Image by WorldIslandInfo.com
Free Inbound Marketing Plan Template
As we get ready to go into 2011, it’s important for business owners to make sure they have a solid inbound marketing plan in place.
If you don’t have one already, here is a free template that will help you make sure you have clearly identified and aligned your business objectives and marketing activity.
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