The 7 Step Inbound Marketing Strategy All Local Businesses Should Adopt

Are you considering launching a local brick-and-mortar business and thinking about how you will market it? Perhaps you are already a local business owner and are interested in improving or implementing an Inbound Marketing Strategy.

?Here’s a solid 7 Step Plan worth considering:

?Step1: Plan

Success begins with planning your Inbound Marketing.

• Start by taking a look at your current needs and, based upon that, set objectives and measurable goals.
• Then, work on and develop an effective content strategy. This includes defining and developing your ideal customer personas
• It will be critical to identify and define the responsibilities behind executing the creation and publishing of your content
• Lastly, brainstorm premium content ideas and set consistent (weekly, monthly) times to execute an ongoing strategy

?Step 2: Create

Next, it's time to start developing content that will attract visitors, convert visitors to leads, and position you as a thought leader.

Content comes in a lot of forms. It's your job to find out where your audience is and what they want to consume from your business.

For instance, you can create content in the form of:

• ?Blog Posts where you share long-form information (could be recipes, how-to’s, product reviews, customer experiences, or educational material)
• ?Social Posting: Posting frequently and consistently shows your business is ACTIVE! It’s a very good idea to post a few times daily. You never know when your audience will be looking to check you out!

But who has time to constantly be online when you’re trying to run a business? (We completely understand! Scheduling and batch publishing allows you to be present and working in your business while ‘automation’ helps you execute your social posting schedule! (Btw, if you need help with this, let us know, we’d be elated to help!)

• ?Videos you publish to Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok
• Webinars where you deliver educational, entertaining, and informative content
• Podcasts: Podcasting can be an amazing way to record and distribute audio (and video) interviews and educational content relative to your industry or locale
• EBooks: a phenomenal way to create a lead magnet or something that attracts your ideal customers who are interested in finding out more about what it is your business does and the value you bring.
• White Papers: much like an ebook, a white paper can also be a great lead magnet and vehicle to share content. Incidentally, using ebooks or white papers as lead magnets is a very good idea and way to build a customer email list!

Step 3: Distribute

As you come up with content worthy of being shared to your audience, the next step is to distribute it!

Distribution should also be considered within your Planning Step.

Use a content calendar to help schedule our your strategic content distribution.

Distributing to the social channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, you’ll actively and passively help your business get discovered while building an audience.

Step 4: Capture

The real goal here with content marketing is to create inbound leads coming to your business!

Planning and having a mechanism that converts visitors and those consuming your content into new leads and qualified prospects is the whole point of Inbound Marketing.

This includes making compelling calls to action within and as part of your content which leads your audience to visit your contact forms, landing, and checkout pages!

?Need help with this? Reach out to me, and I'll be glad to help!

Step 5: Analyze

That which gets measured improves!

Establishing a routine to consistently measure the results of your Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing strategy is not only necessary but smart!?

Reviewing the data will help your local business determine what’s working and what’s not and how to adjust so you can consistently improve and move towards the results you’re looking to achieve!

By measuring, you can identify top lead sources, which topics and posts are being read most, what content is being shared and which offers are converting readers/viewers into leads or transactional customers.

Step 6: Cultivate

Your plan is coming together! Once you’ve set this Inbound Marketing Strategy into motion, you can begin to cultivate!

?Maintaining a lead nurturing supported by automation will help your local business continue to establish trust and credibility!

To do this:

Use marketing automation (email campaigns and workflows to help your audience and website visitors get to know you better, learn more about your company and products and move them through your sales process!

Step 7: Convert

Speaking of sales processes…

The last step in your inbound marketing strategy is to convert those that consume your content!

?As your audience travels through your inbound marketing funnel and responds to your call to your action, they will become either a lead or transactional customer.

Having a sales process that invites leads to become customers and customers to become repeat customers is probably the most valuable step in this entire strategy.

Segmenting your audience is part of Step 7. Knowing how to and consistently communicate will help serve your audience and your business no matter what part of the lifecycle stage your audience fits.

Conclusion:

There is no conclusion. Only results! Inbound Marketing is a smart play for any local business. Your relationship with your list is probably your biggest asset.

Being able to communicate with your list will help you make sales, get your customers to come back more often, and buy more from you each time they do!

Don’t have a list? Maybe it's time to consider your Inbound Marketing Strategy!

?Need Help? Reach out to me, I would be glad to help!