, let’s think about inbound marketing.

In this use case, ACME Corporation provides a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product to a B2B target audience of program managers.

Historically, ACME’s website has produced 100 inbound leads per month. But, only 1 out of 4 leads are qualified by their sales development representatives (SDRs).

The data shows the sales cycle is at least 12-months on qualified SDR leads.

You and the Chief Revenue Officer see an opportunity to implement an inbound marketing campaign to produce more qualified leads and shorten the sales cycle.

How to Approach the Project:

As you know from past experience , the first step of an inbound marketing planning process is to audit ACME’s existing lead generation sources.

Ask someone on your marketing team to determine which lead generation channels (organic search, social media, videos, etc) are producing the most leads, and which channels are producing the best leads.

Your team member can use UX research tools (see our recommended toolsets below) to research, test, and analyze the lead generation conversion funnels on ACME’s website, landing pages, mobile pages, and apps.

This will also be a good time to test ACME’s user interfaces for friction.

Your team can test for friction by asking your users for feedback at critical stages of the conversion process.

After you’ve tested ACME’s user interfaces for frictin, and collected and analyzed the user feedback, you’re ready to divise a conversion rate optimization (CRO) plan.

CRO should be a central part of your inbound marketing strategy. The goal is to continuously improve existing and future inbound marketing conversion funnels.

Your team should use CRO to reduce UI friction, solve UX problems, answer user questions, increase conversion rates, and shorten the sales cycle.

, this is how we recommmend you approach your inbound marketing project for ACME.

How to Plan an Inbound Strategy:

Based on your past inbound marketing experience, you will need to gather qualitative and quantitative web analytics to inform your inbound marketing strategy.

As a reminder, analytics programs like Google Analytics will provide you with quantitative data (numbers & stats). Quantitative data answers “what” questions. In other words, what people do on ACME’s website.

And, analytics programs like UserTesting.com will provide you with qualitative data (voice-of-the-customer feedback). Qualitative data answers “why” questions. Generally,  qualitative research will tell you why people do what they do on your website.

The third type of research required to plan an effective inbound strategy is target market research.

Keep in mind, the target market research you gather will be the foundation of your content creation and inbobund marketing strategy.

, do you follow me so far?

In my experience, high-quality marketing content is the most critical component of a winning inbound marketing campaign.

Inbound content must be strategic and have a purpose. So that’s why collecting and analyzing data before you begin is so important and critical to ACME’s inbound marketing success. 

How to Get Started:

• 1. Use a tool like SpyFu to analyze your competition’s keywords and ad campaigns
  2. Use software like UserTesting to collect valuable feedback from your website and app users
  3. Use software like Promoter.io to survey your customers using Net Promoter Score

Next Steps:

• 1. Analyze the data and prepare your case for a brand awareness campaign
  2. Present your SWOT reports to your project stakeholders and have an open discussion about your findings
  3. Meet with your marketing teammates and ideate a content marketing strategy for your brand awareness campaign