Ever wondered what your Inbound Marketing Strategist does behind the scenes? Here’s a look at how your IMS optimises your campaigns for success.
If Inbound Marketing is your drug, then an inbound marketing strategist is your dealer.
That sounds dramatic, but clients who start an immersive inbound marketing strategy find the data and insights so enthralling that they can’t imagine going back to the opacity of previous marketing efforts.
Aside from regular data hits, what, exactly, can you expect from an inbound marketing strategist (IMS)? Principal IMS, Nicole Sengers and Senior IMS at Spitfire Inbound, Sarah Mills have shed a little light on what goes on behind the scenes in an inbound marketing agency and what you can expect from your go-to person: the IMS.
Imagine you’re building a home. That’s a favourite analogy of our Strategic Director, Alison Leishman, for an inbound marketing relationship. A home needs:
- blueprints (a comprehensive strategy)
- a solid foundation (like buyer personas and their journeys, amongst many other elements established in onboarding)
- intricate relationships with experts (from content to PPC to anything else you need to execute a faceted inbound strategy) to take the concept to perfection
When you build your own home, your goal is to produce long term results based on solid foundations. Your inbound marketing strategy, like your home, should be able to withstand the test of time. Just as your needs in your home change, so do the needs of your business - a good strategy is never a once-off deal. It needs to be responsive to data, and requires ongoing measurement and optimisation. This is where your IMS comes in.
Your IMS is, first of all, your go-to person for your inbound strategy. They manage, implement, analyse, and optimise your inbound marketing efforts and your HubSpot portal.
Take building a new home. As a home-owner, there is a lot going on that you don’t always have insight into, but happens to make sure your building is not only safe, but also sound. Your IMS is:
- The architect: looking at the big picture and ensuring all components and the consulting experts of your strategy are working to the same goal - your business’ success - and keeping it in line with your strategy. A large proponent of their job is digging into analytics and constantly optimising your strategy based on the resultant data and insights derived from it.
- The foreman: they make sure every element you need to run a successful campaign is delivered on time, in-line with your business message and is reflective of the overall strategy. Concurrent PPC and social media campaigns, content, landing pages, workflows, email blasts, and more all fall under this.
- The electrician: they make sure that all of your wiring - the parts connecting the big picture together and making sure the switches do what they need to - is working optimally. Think workflows that nurture leads along their journey to sales.
- The builder: a core part of creating an inbound strategy that yields real results, your IMS will plan and construct almost every element of your strategy themselves - from inputting buyer personas into the tool, to building and implementing workflows that will nurture your leads, to making sure the correct tracking codes are on the site, to uploading blog posts, and more.
- Resident: Your IMS does more than look in from the outside - they’re completely invested in your success and “live” in the house you’ve built together, too. Your success is their success, and driving actual ROI and sales from strategy is the ultimate goal of any good IMS.
How does your IMS do all of this?
Complete immersion into our clients’ industries
Complete buy-in is the only way to fully understand an industry. Your IMS needs to dive in head first, and actually live and breathe your products and services.
The role of an IMS is to become entrenched in their client’s business. This means setting up Google alerts, monitoring the macro-environment (for competition, changes in legislation, trends, and so on) and identifying opportunities for our clients to leverage to their advantage (think Oreo at the Superbowl). Your IMS will spend time, on a weekly basis, researching and identifying trends that will help us to place your brand at the forefront of your industry.
Ultimately, your IMS needs to understand all aspects of your business and become as passionate about your products and services as you are.
Remaining agile and responsive
Sometimes a wall needs to be knocked down, and other times a fresh coat of paint will do - it’s up to your IMS to identify which areas of your inbound strategy need to be adjusted, and how big (or small) the adjustment needs to be.
One of the keys to a successful inbound strategy is to be able to dig into the data and identify what’s working and what isn’t - and then adjust your strategy accordingly.
Your IMS is constantly looking for opportunities to optimise your account and deliver superior results. We use tools like HubSpot, HotJar and Google Analytics to collect data (e.g. user engagement) and then use A/B tests to identify what changes need to be made. We also present all of our findings back to our clients so that you’re aware of how your campaign is performing and where there’s room for improvement.
Continuous skills development
One of the ways we ensure that our clients receive top quality service, and strategies which deliver the results you need, is through ongoing skills development.
Our team has various programmes in place (such as our mentorship programme, target practice and Spitfire Flight Academy) to help upskill each other. We also need to put in two hours each week independently, whether it’s doing certifications, attending a webinar or going to a training seminar.
There are numerous steps your IMS takes behind the scenes to make sure that we can manage our clients’ accounts effectively. A successful inbound campaign is built on the back of a data-driven strategy, fueled by intensive research and a deep understanding of our clients products and industry.
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