How to start an inbound marketing campaign (plus FAQs)

Read Time 19 mins | Written by: Vicci Noreiko

Letters spelling 'Marketing' on a white background - How to start an inbound marketing campaign - Copify blog

If you want to widen your business’s reach, it may be time to consider creating a new marketing campaign. Inbound marketing is a type of marketing that can be both low-cost and highly effective, often targeting those customers who are most likely to convert anyway.

Inbound marketing continues to grow in popularity, and according to a survey by HubSpot, 70% of companies today actively invest in content marketing. In this article, we explore what inbound marketing is, examples of inbound marketing campaigns and how to start an inbound marketing campaign for your business.

What is an inbound marketing campaign?
Why start an inbound marketing campaign?
Inbound marketing campaign examples: 4 strategies to try
How to start an inbound marketing campaign
1. Identify your target audience
2. Set inbound marketing goals
3. Identify SEO keywords
4. Develop inbound marketing strategies
5. Consider mixing in some outbound marketing
6. Track and measure the success of your inbound marketing campaign
Why is goal setting important to inbound marketing?

What is an inbound marketing campaign?

Image of a laptop and smartphone on social media - How to start an inbound marketing campaign - Copify blog

An inbound marketing campaign is a marketing strategy that focuses on attracting potential customers to a company or brand by providing valuable and relevant content, rather than directly promoting a product or service. It differs from outbound marketing campaigns, which are all about trying to attract new customers to your business from external sources.

Inbound marketing campaigns involve creating content that provide value to the target audience, such as informative blog posts and articles, thought-leadership pieces, educational ebooks and engaging social media content. These are all marketing channels that users choose to view. In contrast, outbound marketing might include PPC marketing campaigns, which are targeted at customers who are trying to search the web or browse an unrelated website.

Why start an inbound marketing campaign?

The goal of an inbound marketing campaign is to build relationships with potential customers. Once these potential customers have engaged with the content, businesses can then nurture them through the sales funnel and convert them into loyal customers.

Inbound marketing is a relatively effective form of marketing precisely because it targets those consumers who are already open to your brand. It only reaches those customers who have in some way opted into your content, either by following your page on social media or signing up to an email newsletter. Because of this, the money you invest in inbound marketing isn’t wasted on customers who aren’t interested in your products or services.

Inbound marketing campaign examples: 4 strategies to try

An inbound campaign may involve a combination of inbound and outbound tactics, but the primary focus should be on inbound efforts. The key to inbound marketing is creating meaningful, useful, or entertaining content that can be published via email, an online blog, or social media to an audience of consumers who are already interested in what you have to say.

Some of the most popular types of inbound marketing campaigns include:

1. Social media promotion: This includes both organic and paid growth on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, in order to attract new customers who might not have been aware of your business in the past. 59% of the global population uses social media, making this a significant market for all businesses.

2. Creating high-quality blogs: Inbound marketing also includes creating a variety of visually appealing and informative blog posts in order to attract new readers who will be interested in your products or services.

3. Search engine optimisation (SEO): SEO enables you to place higher in search rankings so that when users do a search for services related to your own, you appear as a top result rather than an irrelevant result that hasn’t been updated in months or years.

4. Email marketing: Many marketers find email to be both useful and cost-effective, as it allows those consumers who have already expressed interest in their brand to receive targeted information from their favourite businesses. Email marketing is only inbound marketing if it is targeted at customers who have already opted into receiving a mailing list or newsletter.

How to start an inbound marketing campaign

If you’re embarking on your first inbound marketing campaign, it’s important to research how to start an inbound marketing campaign and how to use your inbound marketing strategies to reach your objectives.

Follow the steps below to start an inbound marketing campaign that’s tailored to your goals:

1. Identify your target audience

Image of someone writing 'audience' on a whiteboard - How to start an inbound marketing campaign - Copify blog

Before you can begin inbound marketing, it’s important to research who your target audience is and how they behave online. Research the way your audience chooses to learn about topics online and target these topics and websites with your inbound marketing efforts. This way, you can maximise the reach of your inbound content and ensure that you’re investing in content that your audience will actually want to read.

2. Set inbound marketing goals

It’s important to set realistic marketing campaign goals in order to measure the success of your inbound marketing efforts and use this data to tweak and improve your campaign. Your goals might include attracting a certain number of visitors each month, increasing website traffic by 10%, or increasing your visitor conversion rate. Later, you can use these goals as a benchmark to assess whether your campaign was successful and, if needed, increase them for your next campaign.

3. Identify SEO keywords

SEO keywords are going to be a vital aspect of your inbound marketing campaign, especially if you’re writing blogs or social media content. The keyword strategy that you use will determine whether your content shows up in search results, so it’s important to choose the right keywords and optimise your pages with them. You can use keyword tools to identify popular keywords and search terms that are relevant to your business and use these in your content.

4. Develop inbound marketing strategies

Image of a marketer creating a plan with post-its - How to start an inbound marketing campaign - Copify blog

Once you’ve researched who your target audience is and what they want from their online experience, decide how you can make this possible for them through inbound efforts. The first big decision you will have to make is which inbound channels you are going to use to communicate with your audience.

Your research into your audience’s online behaviour and your campaign goals will inform this choice. You may decide to focus on writing new blog posts for your website, which can help increase website traffic from search engines, or you might focus on gaining new followers on social media by launching a series of competitions on Facebook and Instagram.

5. Consider mixing in some outbound marketing

If you’re happy with the shape your inbound marketing campaign is taking but it’s still not reaching as many people as you’d like, it might be worth pairing it with some outbound marketing. Consider a PPC strategy with Google Search ads which can help to boost the visibility of your inbound content. Targeted social media ads can also help raise your profile amongst your core demographic, especially if you're looking to raise brand awareness.

6. Track and measure the success of your inbound marketing campaign

Before you move on to a new campaign, it’s important to end every marketing campaign with an assessment of its success. You should be tracking key metrics throughout the course of your campaign, including website traffic, social media followers, conversion rate, and more.

Using this data, you can assess whether your marketing campaign successfully helped you reach the goals you set at the beginning of the campaign, as well as identify which aspects of your campaign were the most effective. Which social media posts received the most engagement, and which channel did most of your new website traffic come from? Answering these questions can help you create an even better campaign next time around.

Why is goal setting important to inbound marketing?

Of course, the success of a campaign can almost always be traced back to the original aim. Goal setting is essential to inbound marketing because it provides a clear direction and purpose for the marketing efforts. Inbound marketing is all about attracting and engaging with potential customers through valuable content and experiences that address their needs and interests.

Without clear goals, inbound marketing can become aimless and ineffective. By setting specific and measurable goals, inbound marketers can ensure that they are focusing their efforts on the areas that will have the greatest impact on the business.

Goals also help inbound marketers track their progress and determine whether their efforts are generating the desired results. Using this information allows them to adjust their strategies and tactics to stay on track and achieve their objectives.

Some common goals for inbound marketing include increasing website traffic, generating leads, improving lead quality, boosting sales, and increasing customer retention. By setting and working towards these goals, inbound marketers can create a more effective and efficient marketing strategy that drives results and helps grow the business.

✏️If you need help implementing your inbound marketing campaign, why not use a trusted copywriting agency to produce engaging content for you?

Header: Merakist

Embedded images: Austin Distel, Melanie Deziel, Brands&People

Framework Will Help You Grow Your Business With Little Effort.

Get Started

Vicci Noreiko

Vicci is a Content Delivery Manager at Copify who's gained over ten years' experience in content creation since graduating from university with a degree in English and Philosophy. When she's not writing copy, she's probably reading, playing video games, or being bossed around by her three cats.