A major part of any inbound marketing strategy is an assessment of what a company is doing, what other opportunities may be out there and the ongoing results of the strategy. Sometimes, even companies that have been actively engaged in inbound marketing for several years find they are making mistakes, leading to a decline in their results. It’s surprising, since online businesses know the importance of increasing their reach through blogs, podcasts, videos or newsletters. So just what are these commonly made mistakes?
- Ignoring buyer personas
A really important part of inbound marketing, yet something that gets ignored or outdated – is creating personas to outline the ideal client profile. Creating them is hard enough, keeping them up to date is even harder, but essential, if you want to gain and maintain traction. When creating personas, the objective should clearly define the identifiers for each persona, their challenges and priorities, their experience with your product or service and what questions they seek answers to, on an ongoing basis. Habits change, so personas should be closely reviewed, at least annually, to make sure they are still relevant.
- Your website
Like the personas, websites need to be reviewed and updated, since the efforts of inbound marketing could bring about the need for support from the website. Sites with more and more added content become confusing and overloaded, so often there is a need to take it right back to the original design and see what needs changing at the core. When designing a website, bear in mind the ongoing need for change when your business and its needs evolve, from design and images to content.
- Content alignment
Creating a content map for each page of your website, your blogs, landing pages, graphics and CTAs is a good way to address the relationship your website needs to have with its visitors. The content must align with their needs, their buying journey, their questions and their device choice.
- Not enough nurturing
Inbound marketing, done correctly, captures the attention of potential buyers and brings them to your website, but there is still work to be done to convert them to leads. Most often visitors to your site seek information, not to buy something. Lead nurturing is the next step, helping your potential leads understand their needs and the value you can provide them. More than just sending out emails or free downloads, nurturing requires a plan, a lot of personalisation and discipline to reap results.
- Using your data
Despite the valuable data you can collect as a result of inbound marketing, very few companies use this data to make decisions. Checking metrics to see which pages get the most traffic, which buying patterns emerge etc. are vital for planning. The data helps to motivate what tests or experiments to run, to determine trends and give valuable insights.
Like most things online, change happens quickly, so you need to evaluate your inbound marketing strategy to ensure your results don’t dwindle. For assistance with your company’s digital marketing, contact us.