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An inbound marketing strategy brings all of an organization’s inbound marketing goals together and places them into one comprehensive plan. An inbound marketing strategy should focus on how you will meet the needs of and deepen engagement with your audience and how you will grow and maintain sales. The first step in creating an inbound marketing strategy is understanding where you currently are. Only by understanding your current state, are you able to create goals that are truly relevant, realistic and achievable.

Reaching the right person with the right message may seem at first as something very challenging, as something achievable only by the works of sorcery or simply impossible. But that’s not the case at all. By following these tangible and straightforward steps you can reach directly the people you want to and ensure your message will be received well.

Inbound marketing tactics are specific marketing activities that are conducted in support of your inbound marketing strategy. Inbound marketing tactics are defined and followed in accordance to your inbound marketing plan. There are a wide variety of inbound marketing tactics that an organization can utilize. Some of these include search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click ads (PPC), blogs, email campaigns, social media, landing pages, videos, podcasts, eBooks, whitepapers, product demos and trials and the list goes on.

Relating to inbound marketing, content can be one of many different items. This can refer to a blog, a video, email newsletters, podcasts, eBook, checklist, webinar, and more. All of these items are designed to attract a variety of potential clients as well as help retain them over time. Business content is used to help and convert potential customer into lead. Content will help you and your business to positioned as a thought leader of your industry.

HubSpot is a marketing software and content management system that is built around the inbound marketing methodology. In fact, it is said that the term “inbound marketing” was coined by Brian Halligan, one of HubSpot’s founders. HubSpot is focused on providing customers a marketing automation platform where they can easily develop, deploy, manage and track inbound campaigns across email, social media,blogs, websites, SEO and more.

Social media monitoring, also known as social media listening, is the process of actively monitoring what is being said about your company, competitors or a specific topic across social media platforms. Social media monitoring allows you to gain insight into public opinion, identify influencers and industry trends, provide customer support and reach prospects.

A more multi dimensional approach to marketing and communication, H2H, or Human to Human, takes away all of the individual distinctions that often come along with this type of business practice. The H2H approach labels us all as humans so we can communicate that way and find a common approach.

B2C refers to the exchange of information, services or products between a business and their consumers. While traditional sales would occur in a physical store location, B2C typically occurs over the internet, with consumers shopping online or seeking out some sort of service.

A Marketing Qualified Lead, commonly referred to as MQL, is a contact who is more deeply engaged than a typical lead, but requires additional nurturing before becoming sales ready. It is important to keep MQLs warm, so to speak, by continuing to foster interest in your products or services until they are ready to make a purchase decision.

A sales qualified lead (SQL) is a prospective customer who has displayed intent to buy your company's products or services and has met lead qualification criteria. Once a prospect reaches the SQL stage, they are ready to be contacted by your sales department. In order to effectively qualify contacts as they move through the buyer’s journey, sales and marketing teams within your organization need to identify and agree upon qualities a prospect must have and actions they must take in order to advance to the next lifecycle stage.