The whole purpose of an inbound marketing plan is to ensure that you have set out all of the tactics necessary to hit the business targets that you have set. There are a variety of overall goals that you need to examine to determine which way to go with your marketing.

Revenue Growth Goals

If you are hoping to double your revenue year over year, you’ll need to ensure that your marketing strategy supports this goal. What do you need to keep in mind when it comes to traffic, conversion rates, number of qualified leads, prospects and customers to hit these targets?
To double your revenue, does that mean you need to increase your lead to close rate? Quadruple your traffic and improve conversion rates in order to get there? What about making your marketing and sales process more streamlined and effective?
Knowing this information allows for you to understand what specific tactics will be required. Do you need more content and social? An optimized web presence? More sales people to help with the additional leads?

Launching a New Product or Service

Perhaps you need to start from the bottom up, and determine your target market and your buyer personas from scratch?
How are you going to reach this new audience? You’ll need to determine your content strategy and where and how to best reach this audience based on their interests and online behaviour.
Where does your audience hang out online? What types of media do they read, and on what platforms do they spend all of their time? How do they respond to emails? How do they make their purchase decisions?
Create a compelling story to help draw in your audience, and nurture them along the way throughout this buying cycle, from the Awareness Stage, to Consideration, to Decision Making and then Purchase.

Increasing Sales to Your Current Client Base

Perhaps you aren’t launching a new product or service, but want to increase sales to your current client list?
Maybe you have past clients who have purchased your product or services, but it’s possible they may become a repeat customer or it’s time to increase the services that they need on an ongoing basis.
With inbound marketing, you can put together a plan to nurture these clients and provide them with more information on the products or services they have not yet purchased from you. Perhaps they aren’t aware of all of the available options, or else they just haven’t thought about your business in awhile.
Remind them of what else is out there and how you may be able to help them reach THEIR goals, business or personal.
Focus on doing this via compelling stories on your website, case studies, and other content whether it’s email marketing, video, or social media touchpoints.

Expanding Your Business in Multiple Locations or Franchises

Another potential business goal could be to open up additional locations or franchises;
Thus, you may need a plan to increase your business in another brick and mortar location, or sell a franchise to a new owner.
You’ll need to plan how you can fine tune your inbound marketing for new areas, or else entice new potential franchisors to trust your company so that they consider being a part of it.

Summary

Now that you know what it is that you need to achieve for your business, you can ensure that your inbound planning falls in line, providing the actionable steps and tactics to hit your business goals.
You may have one of the aforementioned goals in mind, or a combination of them – use this to sort out how you will be marketing for the coming year. 

Now that you understand more about your overall business goals and how that will impact your inbound marketing plans for the year, make sure to check out our recent blog posts covering more useful inbound marketing tips.

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