6 Mistakes SMEs Are Making With Their Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing campaigns, when done right, can be a phenomenally successful way of generating leads at a percentage of the price of traditional advertising. However, mistakes can happen when revamping your marketing strategy and this can lead to your business not getting the return on investment you were hoping for.

By considering all aspects of your inbound marketing strategy you will be able to avoid these common hurdles that SMEs can face when implementing content marketing into their business.

Setting too many goals

Goals are important to give your marketing team focus and provide some tangible metrics that you can measure to prove the ROI of your marketing efforts. However, by setting too many goals will just confuse your team’s priorities and cause a loss of focus, which could stop you from meeting any, let alone all your goals.

Instead, consider which goals are most important to your business and what you need to tackle first. Then, by constructing SMART goals with realistic deadlines, you can move on to the next set of secondary goals as you achieve the first.

Trying to appeal to too many buyer personas

As you work your way through your marketing strategy, you may start to think of all the types of customers you have and feel overwhelmed by the amount of different people that could need their own buyer personas.

When you set about creating your buyer personas, bear in mind that however many personas you have created, you will then need to create content to appeal to these semi-fictitious profiles.

Click here to find out more about creating buyer personas for your digital marketing.

Your time will be much better spent if you were to focus on your top two or three personas and create quality content, which will appeal to these buyers first. Once you’ve built up a good library of content for these personas, and if you feel you have the time and resources to do so, you can then move onto your secondary consumers that make up a smaller section of your customer base.

Not carrying out keyword research

You know what your customers want, right? So why would you need to look into any keywords? Well for starters, the technical language you use within your business may not always translate to what your customers would be searching for.

By conducting thorough keyword research you will not only have a better understanding of the problems that lead customers to your services or products, but also allow you to use the correct keywords within your content to help it get found in search engines.

Trying to answer all the aspects of your buyer’s cycle

Making content that you can answer all the questions that a potential customer may have over the period of the buyer’s journey is impossible. It will be too long, too confusing and no one will be able to take in that amount of information in one sitting. Therefore, before producing any piece of content, plan what stage of the buyer’s cycle you are writing for and which buyer persona you are targeting. Then, you can create focussed and concise pieces of content that users will find interesting and helpful, rather than overwhelming.

Forgetting the call-to-action

When creating your content you must always consider the call-to-action that you will include. You may think it seems quite straightforward where a customer’s journey should go from each piece of content, but as a customer who may be new to your website or unaware of everything you have to offer, it will not always be easy to see a clear next step, and they could leave your site before leaving their details.

Whether you want the user to download a piece of content, sign up for an appointment or subscribe to your mailing list, make it clear and easy for them to follow and you should see your leads improve dramatically.

Attempting to grow communities on every social media platform

Social media is an important part of any inbound marketing strategy, however attempting to be present on every single social media platform as an SME will be near impossible. Instead, you should consider which platforms your target market would be on and focus on building a community there. By focussing on just one or two platforms you will be able to create quality content to really engage with your audience.

By avoiding these common mistakes, you will be able keep the focus of your inbound marketing strategy on what really matters to help your marketing team work smarter.