Developing a successful inbound digital marketing program requires a balance of technical know-how and strategic analysis.
Do you have the right tools in place to deliver high efficiency and productivity? Do you have the right team members with the right skill sets to execute and manage your strategy?
With these pieces in place, you can provide the right content, delivered in the right digital channels at the right time. The goal is to attract prospects, turn them into customers and delight them into loyal brand fans.
12 Must Have Digital Marketing Tools
- Mobile Friendly Website. Your website is one of your most effective ways to interact with potential customers. Of course, you want to make sure it is designed to give your current and potential customers the best possible experience and optimized for high performance SEO. With a large percentage of people doing their searches on their phones, it’s important that your website works well with mobile devices.
- A Blog. Having a blog is an incredibly easy way to publish new articles. Since frequently posting valuable content is one way to succeed in inbound marketing, it almost makes a blog a “must-have” item.
- The Right Tracking Tools. Tracking and analyzing data is the key to a positive ROI. At bare minimum, you can see how many visits your website gets; what pages on your site are most visited; what times your site gets the most visits; and even where your website visitors are located geographically.
- Keyword Research. Keyword research is basically discovering how personas word their questions and searches and then using those words or phrases in your content so that your business gets “found” online. These keywords will give you insight as to how you should word your content and even your own questions.
- Marketing Automation. Marketing automation is software (like HubSpot) that sends out your content to the right people at the right time for you. The goal of marketing automation is to cultivate your leads into customers, and your customers into happy advocates of your business, without requiring you to spend all day thinking about who you’ll send what content to and when. Marketing automation systems improve efficiency and productivity.
- Buyer Sales Funnel. A buyer’s sales funnel is a visualization of your selling process. It defines when a visitor becomes a lead, when a lead becomes a marketing qualified lead (someone who is more likely to become a customer, abbreviated MQL), and when an MQL actually becomes a customer. The process from visitor to lead to MQL to customer is known as the customer lifecycle and includes the stages of Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel and Bottom of Funnel. Since businesses can have different lifecycle stages, this funnel will look different for everyone.
- Campaign Offers. Campaign offers are pieces of content that are worth enough to visitors that they’re willing to give you some of their personal information to receive them. Offers range in worth and include eBooks, white papers, guides, PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, templates, etc. Just as the buyer funnel has a top, middle and bottom, so too do offers. You can use your buyer funnel to help create and organize offers. To recommend that users take these offers, you can utilize something called a call to action that encourages a person to take a step toward your company. You want your CTA to offer something relevant so the reader is actually interested in receiving it.
- Landing Pages. When someone clicks on a CTA, they will be sent to a landing page — a page that presents your offer and contains a form for their information. Be sure to ask only for as much information as the user would be willing to give for that offer. Once they enter their information to receive the offer, they should be brought to a thank -you page.
- Thank-You Pages. Thank-you pages thank the visitor for downloading your offer. This is a great place to guide them further down your buyer funnel. A thank-you page is a great place for another relevant CTA.
- Email. You’ll receive visitors’ email addresses in your forms, which you can use to keep readers updated with fresh, new content when you publish it. You can also use email to help nurture TOF prospects toward the MOF with an offer and guide MOF leads toward becoming BOF customers.
- Social Media. When you develop your buyer personas, find out what social media networks they use the most. Twitter? LinkedIn? Maybe Facebook or Google+? Wherever your buyer personas are, this is where you should be sharing your content. Add share buttons to your website and content so that with just a click of the mouse, readers can share your content to their preferred social media networks.
- CRM. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Companies will utilize CRM software to track interactions with current and potential customers. It helps you see which visitors turned into leads, and which leads turned into customers. But that’s not all. Some CRM programs can also track phone calls, faxes, customer service interactions, deals and even appointments. Ultimately, a CRM should be an easy way for you to grab every piece of information you have about current or future customers.
