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1. DEFINE YOUR TARGETS Take a cool look at your best, most profitable customers. What industries, sizes, locations and problems do they have in common?

2. SELECT YOUR AUDIENCE Who are the decision-makers and influencers? What positions and problems do they have? What do they have in common? How are they different?

3. SET YOUR GOALS If this audience were to visit your website, how would you like them to feel? What content can you give them to make them feel that way? What calls to action will guide them to download it?

4. CHOOSE YOUR CONTENT Take a look at your content now—White Papers, best practice guides, proposals etc—and decide which can be re-purposed for web. Split the big ones into 1 page summaries, slideshares, infographics or blog posts for fast consumption.

5. CREATE A CONTENT HUB Create your website as a hub of useful content for your defined audiences. Make your web pages engaging, your blog posts interesting, and your resources useful and easy to find. Your website is critical to inbound marketing: it’s the honey pot.

6. OPTIMISE IT You want to entice buyers who are looking, so make sure your web pages are optimised to inform and convince them, not just for search. Deliver on the promise to both, and they’ll both do what you wish.

7. ENGAGE WEB VISITORS Speak to them directly and solve their problems. Give them useful content, freely. Make your ‘calls to action’ relevant to your topics and easy to find. Make your website a great place to visit , return to and share.

8. MAKE IT EASY Don’t interrogate your web visitors to get their email details. If you do, they’ll disengage before reading any of your great content. Make it quick and simple. You can ask more questions once they know you.

9. ADD SOCIAL Search engines take notice of social media engagement, so get your great content out there, read and shared. It’s time-consuming and unpredictable, but it can’t be ignored. It will pay off in time.

10. ADD OUTBOUND Now you can be pro-active. Send your email contacts useful stuff, qualify them and match your content to their buyer journeys.

Build relationships and treat them well, and the genuine buyers among your web visitors just might become customers. ###

10 steps to inbound marketing success

Chasing disinterested contacts is time-consuming and demoralising. These days, you’re better off attracting those who are looking for what you do. It’s cheaper and faster too.