3 Ways to Improve Your Inbound Marketing Strategy and Get More Leads

Getting more leads can be directly related to having a successful inbound marketing strategy.

Through the process of fully understanding who you are trying to reach, what their problems are, how you can solve them, and the timeframe in which you can do that in, you can fine tune a successful inbound marketing strategy.

1. Analyze Your Lead Flow Process

If you’re looking to enhance your efforts and bring in more leads, start by revisiting the ways in which you generate leads.

It’s important to look at the different avenues in which your business brings in leads. This is something that you should do annually so that you’re able to see how your current marketing efforts are performing. Once you analyze your current lead flow process, you’re able to take that information and use it to plan out future marketing strategies.

With this direction, you can see the reoccurring trends among your incoming leads and marketing. For instance, are your leads coming mainly from client referrals? Or possibly outreach from your sales people? Or maybe even through your website?

No matter the medium in which someone becomes a lead, how you nurture them will make all the difference. The process in which you do this is critical, and the means in which you supply the leads with the necessary information to move them through the buyer’s journey is important. One of the most effective ways to do this is through case studies. In fact, 42% of B2B marketers plan to increase their investments in case studies in 2022.

Those looking to work with businesses like yours want to be able to see what you’ve done for others like them. By providing case studies and other forms of testimonials during the lead flow process, you’re able to establish credibility and rapport with potential clients.

Once you’ve analyzed your lead flow efforts and made the necessary adjustments, you want to ensure that you’re catering to the right people.

2. Update Your Target Personas

While you’re reworking the way in which you generate leads, you should also ensure you’re updating your target personas to match their interests, current trends, and what you have to offer them.

For example, does the segment that your targeting look different now?

Say you are an HVAC company that is looking to bring on new repeat customers. Well, the segment you’re likely after are those who have recently purchased a home, possibly their first ever. When thinking about who falls into that category, it’s likely to be a younger demographic that are starting families of their own and investing in real estate.

Since you’re now targeting a younger group of people, you marketing efforts and lead nurturing process needs to reflect that. For instance, they likely live a busy, on-the-go lifestyle between managing their career and their family, so finding time to watch TV may be difficult. In this case, you have to get in front of them where they can be found. Think podcasts, radio, social media, and OTT ads.

By consistently updating your target personas and tailoring your approach to reaching them, you’ll be able to build a better sales process and have more success with your inbound marketing efforts.

3. Refine Your Marketing Materials

Lastly, you want to make sure that you’ve refined your marketing materials. Whether that be the messaging on your website, within your emails, on your social posts, or the language included in an ad, you want to make sure that it aligns with your target persona and your sales process.

From the content you offer on your website through blogs and downloadable content to the copy on the pages itself, it’s crucial that it speaks to those you’re trying to target, the challenges they are facing, and how it all aligns with the lead flow process. On average, 80% of people visit a business’ website before making a buying decision.

If you aren’t speaking to their problems directly and showing them how you can help, then you won’t see success when it comes to converting a visitor to a lead and eventually a customer. The content and messaging that your brand puts out is just as important as how you do it.

Setting the Tone for Success

When you take time to look at the three different ways in which you can improve your inbound marketing strategy, you’ll begin to see the traction of connecting with the right audience through the right content; and a result of that will be getting more leads.

While it’s important to do this before strategizing any future marketing plans, you also want to revisit these periodically throughout the year to ensure that you are still reaching those who can benefit from your business. As the year goes on, if you see a shift in marketing trends, your target market, or how they want to be advertised to, you can always pivot your efforts to ensure you have the best inbound marketing strategy possible to generate new leads.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in 2014, and has been updated.