Bringing aboard a new inbound client is an exciting time, filled with the potential of a starting fresh project. It's also a vital time for working on building communication, goals, schedules, ideas, and an understanding of your new client in order to create a strong foundation to work from and build a great inbound campaign. Here are five tips that can help you smooth out the process, cover the main basics and get your new client ready to go!
1. Buyer Persona Creation
The first step in order for you to be able to efficiently and effectively help your client is to understand who their buyer is. Their buyer will be the audience you need to speak to and connect with, so the more specific you can be at identifying the target buyer, the better you will be able to adjust content to suit their needs. Creating a buyer persona can help build this specific vision. Work with your client to establish key details about the target buyer, such as age, occupation, income level, education level and other details that will allow you to craft content that speaks to your audience and connects with them on their level. If your client has demographics enabled on their website, or uses various social media platforms, the data from these sites combined with an analysis of the client's products and services can be used to identify not only the client's current audience, but also untapped demographics that they feel would benefit from their product.
2. Blog Topic Generation
Once you've established who you're speaking to, it's time to start thinking of what your client wants to say to them. Generating topics for the client's blog ahead of time allows you to both be on the same page for what is going to be created, and allows you to begin to map the story the content will tell and start research on pieces. As you work on coming up with ideas, try to build pieces around keywords that the target buyer would be searching for. Also, consider the story that consecutive blog posts tell. You may want to do a several-part series to help drive repeat traffic or simply stick with stand-alone pieces, but the posts should flow, in order to encourage visitors to click to the next post or follow through the call to action.
3. Editorial Calendars
After you've decided what will be posted, it's time to consider when it will be posted. This largely depends on the target buyer's expectations of the client. Post too often, and content can overwhelm the buyer, post too infrequently, and the lack of fresh content can make the client appear stale and unreliable. Find out how often your client is currently posting in order to establish a base line of what their buyer base is currently expecting and then, if needed gradually adjust to a posting schedule that suits them best. Higher content volume might be best for a younger, more hip audience base that continually checks in on products and services that they follow, or fewer posts may be necessary for buyers who only check in sporadically.
4. Offer Creation
One of the most important steps is to identify the offers that buyers will be sent towards. These offers need to be tailored to best suit the target buyer's needs as well as tie into the post content. Help your client brainstorm how best to market their product through the offers. Discuss whether offers should simply promote a regular product or service, present a special discount or coupon, be part of a contest or promotion, feature savings on a bundle, or other sales methods.
5. Plan Social Media
With social media being such a key part of bringing inbound traffic to content, you may also want to talk to your client about their social media presence, which channels and services they use the most, which their buyers seem to prefer, and keep this in mind as you create content. Crafting a lead-in sentence or paragraph for social media that matches the tone and content of the post can ensure a smooth transition for potential customers clicking through.
Bringing a client on board and getting ready to help them build their inbound strategy is exciting, but takes careful planning and good communication from the start in order to get the best results. Working through the details with your client to start with ensures a smooth onboarding for both them and their buyers.
