11 Steps to a Successful Marketing Campaign for Software Companies

As inbound marketers, we’re constantly creating and promoting content to attract prospective customers. In the midst of that ongoing work, it sometimes makes sense to run a concentrated inbound marketing campaign.

This campaign should be for a specific goal that is measurable and maybe 4-6 weeks in duration. This is a sprint, not a long distance marathon! You’ll want to align every one of your marketing channels around this single goal and message.

With that in mind, let’s walk through the 11 steps to a successful inbound marketing campaign.

11 steps to a successful inbound marketing campaign

1. Identify your audience. Who are you talking to? Understand your buyer persona(s) before launching into a campaign so you can target them correctly and can speak directly to their challenges and co/blog/get-ready-for-2014-review-and-update-your-buyer-personasncerns.
2. Set your goals. Having SMART goals can help you be sure you’ll have tangible results to share at the end of the campaign. Your goal might look something like this:
   Generate [number] of leads focused on [topic or product] by [date].
3. Create your offers and landing pages. Don’t forget to optimize your landing page(s) for SEO, have a clear value propositions and call to action. Keep your form as short as you can while still meeting the data needs of this campaign. For a top-of-the-funnel offer, usually name and email address is enough. Middle of the funnel offers are more brand focused and could be 5 fields.Keep in mind that the fewer fields you have, the less “friction” or resistance you’ll get for filling out the form.
4. Plan and build your workflow automation and lead nurturing emails. Your campaign doesn’t end when a visitor converts on your landing page — that’s just the beginning! Plan and build follow-up email to nurture that new lead and bring them back to your website. Keep your email content and offers consistent with the overall campaign and their buyer persona.
5. Kick off your campaign with an automated email. A targeted email to a segment of your database is a great way to engage your existing audience of customers or leads, and will bring some quick results to your campaign.
6. Write a blog post (or posts). Your campaign is starting to roll — now is the time to share it with the world! Write a blog post and use it as an opportunity to introduce readers to the valuable content they’ll find in your offer.
7. Add in long tail keywords. Make sure your campaign is SEO friendly so it’s easy for your prospects to find in the search results. Long tail keywords will be more effective for you over time. Remember, good SEO will continue to produce results for you long after this campaign is over!
8. Share it on social media. Promote your blog post and offer on social media to drive that important top-of-the-funnel traffic.
9. Consider paid search and other channels. Pay-per-click, remarketing, and sharing your offer and content on other platforms can add valuable traffic to your site and help you garner more conversions. Be sure that you measure the effectiveness of each of these channels to determine exactly what’s working and what’s not.
10. Track your URLs. Create tracking URLs for each channel so you can see where your traffic if coming from.
11. Report on your outstanding results! You set the goal at the beginning, now it’s time to show off your results! Be sure to include some numbers that relate back to ROI.

Sure, creating an effective inbound marketing campaign takes some time. But the results should make it all worthwhile! These 11 steps should help focus your efforts on the key things that build marketing campaign success.