What's the best way to get started with inbound marketing in 2021?

Some companies have tried inbound marketing in the past, and it did not go as expected. Others are giving this digital marketing thing a try for the very first time. 

Whether you are looking for a restart or a place to begin, here’s how to get your inbound marketing program off the ground. 

Just like anything else in life, you must learn about what you are wanting to accomplish before jumping in. That is why starting with the inbound certification from HubSpot Academy is the best place to begin. 

If you go back to the origins of Inbound marketing, you will find HubSpot. They are the ones that came out with the thesis of inbound marketing and created all-in-one software to make inbound marketing possible.

Once this certification is completed, everything else can follow, but please make sure you start with your certification. 

Some other resources that will be very helpful in your inbound marketing journey are the book They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan, the HubSpot blog, IMPACT+, and Drift’s blog. All of these resources should be bookmarked. If you are looking for additional educational support, here is a list of my top 10 resources.  

🔍 Related: Free Inbound Training and Marketing Courses

Set your goals

Now that the foundation of your education has been completed, it is time to set your goals. Without goals, your company will lack vision into the success of your inbound marketing efforts. 

When setting your goals, it is a best practice to start with how many more clients will you need to hit your revenue target. Then you can reverse-engineer how many clients need to come from marketing.

Next, your team can put in metrics like traffic, leads, and sales opportunities that will help your company hit its overall revenue goal. 

Build out your team

You will need employees to accomplish all of this work. In the beginning, your team could just hire a content manager and then, over time, expand as needed. Overall, you want to make sure you have the right people on your marketing team. 

A fully developed inbound marketing team should have a CMO/director of digital marketing, a content writer, a videographer, and a graphic designer. Most successful inbound marketing campaigns start with producing three to five pieces of content per week, either written or visual. 

Create content that will drive traffic

Once you have everyone in place, look to write three pieces of content and produce two videos per week. Your graphic designer should be helping with visuals to assist in your writing and videos, as well as making updates to the website to provide a better user experience. 

The best place to start when creating content is by asking your sales team what are the most common questions they hear in every meeting. Once you have a list of questions that potential buyers are asking, then you can start developing content to address those questions. 

Measure your results

Next, you can start to measure your success. You should start seeing traffic increases in three to six months, but you can start to use your content in the sales process immediately. With the goals in place, the right people, and content being produced, your team will be interested in seeing what is driving results and what is not. 

The best place to do this is in HubSpot.

For a smaller team just starting, use some of the free tools and then grow into HubSpot's more advanced software offerings once your team is ready. The software will provide data on where contacts are coming from, as well as where they are converting and turning into sales. 

With this type of data, your marketing team will be able to produce more content that drives traffics, leads, and sales. 

With so many requirements and metrics, we know that getting started in inbound marketing in 2021 and can be very overwhelming. 

Take action

Over here at IMPACT, our goal is to help companies see success with inbound marketing, and we start by putting together a full digital sales and marketing plan by understanding your goals and impediments.

We call it Digital Sales & Marketing Mastery. We want to train your team to take full ownership of your marketing. We provide strategic coaching as well as training for HubSpot, content creation, video production, website optimization, and more. We guide you on your journey toward mastery, and after 12, 18, or 24 months you complete the program and are ready to move forward on your own.

We'll be with you every step of the way — until you don't need us anymore. 

Inbound marketing can be a challenge with many moving pieces. Having a guide can help you move forward smartly.

The truth is, every company is different, but the principles of inbound don’t change. It takes an experienced guide to help you apply them to your business. 

Start your learning in IMPACT+, and check out our mastery program when you're ready to ramp up your inbound efforts. This way, you can start your inbound marketing journey off on the right foot!