Inbound services

Achieving optimum results never works without a plan. When you work with Shortlist Marketing, we take you through five specific steps to craft an inbound marketing plan:

1. Audit – we undertake an internal and external analysis. First, we look at your organisation’s current situation and what resources you already have available. Then, we evaluate what the market looks like and carry out a competitor analysis. 

2. Objectives – we work with your senior leadership team to understand your objectives, what revenue goals need hitting and how we can help you reach them. This stage involves setting SMART objectives.

3. Strategy – here, we drill down into your target audience. We craft buyer personas, create a marketing map, and set out a buyer’s journey, looking at drivers, segmentation and product positioning.

4. Communications – once all the above is complete, we turn to explore tactics, and look at what communications will happen when. A full content marketing plan can include blogs, landing pages, social media, ads and email marketing. 

5. Metrics and controls – the only way to measure the success of inbound marketing is to set KPIs so we can track and measure its success.

Once all these steps are outlined and a solid plan is in place, implementation can either be carried out by us or by your own team.

Inbound marketing simply isn’t possible without relevant and engaging content. Yet content creation it’s rarely given the time and dedication that it needs – mainly because companies are busy running the day-to-day business and don’t have time to sit down and think about content, let alone actually create it. Sound familiar? 

Why not let us handle this item on your to-do list? As inbound marketing specialists, we spend time with your team, getting to know your audience and what makes them tick. We look at your tone of voice, so we can inject your personality into written content and make you stand out from the crowd.

Be it blogs, social media posts, landing pages, ads or any other form of content, we have the time and skills to get your message across in the right way.

Marketing is pointless without leads – and leads are pointless if they aren’t converted into revenue. A well-crafted inbound marketing plan and engaging content capture your prospects’ attention – but how do you capture their details so you can start building relationships and progress them along the sales funnel? At Shortlist Marketing, we use a variety of methods: 

Online chat – a relatively new addition to inbound marketing, more and more websites now have a chat function. Used well, it can build relationships and be a springboard to more meaningful communication, which can greatly improve sales chances.

Landing pages – a landing page can make or break your campaign. We work hard at directing your audience to it via social media, ads and emails. But, when it comes down to it, it’s a well-crafted landing page that will convince visitors to take the next step and click on that all-important call to action (CTA) that leads to a sale. 

CTAs – a call to action is the final prod your prospects need to take the next step. They need to be well thought out, clear, relevant to the audience, and, above all, attention-grabbing. While they are crucial at all stages of the sales funnel, the CTA button on your landing page is the one-click you absolutely need in order to turn a prospect into a customer. 

Visitor identification – you can have the best content, great landing pages, intuitive forms and offers, but some visitors just won’t engage. We track and identify these visitors and how they have interacted with your website, then tailor specific marketing campaigns just for them.

Social media marketing takes time and dedication, and can quickly become a drain on your time and resources. However, it’s a hugely beneficial part of an integrated campaign, not only attracting customers but also helping to retain existing ones. That’s why Shortlist Marketing includes it in the initial planning stage of our inbound marketing services. 

Social media pulls together all different marketing aspects – directing people to your website and landing pages, as well as using targeted ads. What’s more, while it’s a great lead generation tool to reach far and wide, it can also facilitate one-to-one conversations via direct messaging, which lead to increased sales opportunities and ROI.

Two things are crucial: finding the appropriate platform and understanding the exact audience you want to target. So we sit down with you to establish these points and then formulate a focused plan that doesn’t just engage your audience but pushes them further down the sales pipeline.

Automation is powerful and integrates all your marketing tools. It establishes what actions a prospect has already taken and what actions need to follow, and then puts each prospect on a personalised journey that moves them down the sales pipeline at their own pace and according to their own buying process. The goal? Whatever the length and path their journey takes the aim is that each prospect arrives at the same endpoint – a sale. 

Setting up and implementing effective marketing automation takes time, skill and a lot of initial overseeing to ensure it’s optimised to suit each of your buyer personas. By working with Shortlist Marketing, you’ll not only save time in the set-up period but also the time you used to spend on managing a manual marketing pipeline.